DAVIE, Fla. – Some residents of a Davie neighborhood say a tick infestation has them trapped inside their homes.
"It is out control," said Adrienne Acosta. "You can't stand outside for even five minutes. It's not just me. It's all the neighbors."
"It's pretty bad," said Jose Lasmarias. "We are trapped in our house."
They are crawling outside the homes. There are ticks inside their homes.
One man says he woke up one morning to find a tick on his arm. And his 1-year-old daughter has a bite on her stomach.
The ticks have taken over several homes in a neighborhood north of Orange Drive, west of the Turnpike.
"It's pretty bad to the point where I can't allow my kids to come outside," Lasmarias said. "I don't want them getting bitten."
He said his leg has bites just from him doing chores outside.
"The pain and itch that I felt, I didn't want my kids to go through that," he said.
The only parasites that spreads more disease than ticks are mosquitoes.
"I called the city of Davie code enforcement and they were proactive in responding," said resident Vincent Beasly.
Because the problem is happening on private property, the city is limited in what it can do. But the landlord of one of the properties did take action.
"He said a guy was going to be spraying and he did come by and spray," Beasly said.
Residents say they think the ticks came from a resident who left behind several dogs that became infested with ticks in the backyard.
Those dogs were removed by Broward Animal Care and Regulation.
A few residents have also sprayed. But in order to get rid of the entire infestation, all the affected areas need to be treated so ticks don't move from one yard to another.