Ticks falling out of trees?

Can this be true? According to my parents this is. Given that my family is from New York (at least 2 generations on 1 side), we are given to, well, Woody Allen style paranoia. My first response was that this was another dramatic exaggeration, and I nodded politely and said, "yeah, yeah" and "ah hah".

But, then I thought about our last hike. It was in a nature reserve owned by the TLC (Triangle Land Conservancy) off of Holley Springs Road in Cary. It is wild and beautiful, with a steep hike up hill to a lovely view and only has a small and well-maintained foot path. The hike was wonderful and Lucy even got a little splash in the stream. I'll have to upload that video clip later. Anyhow, when we got home, we did our usual "tick inspection." To my shock, we found not 1 or 2, but 3 ticks on Lucy. Thankfully, only 1 had latched on and the other 2 were very easy to remove. I even found 1 tick on my pant legs. I caught it crawling up. Yes, it was odd for me to wear long pants hiking in some 80+ degree weather, but the woods are shady, so I preferred it (thankfully).

Apparently there was some feature story on our local NPR station about the ticks in North Carolina. I missed this story on air, but I'd like to hear it.

Unfortunatly, there isn't much you can do to prevent tick exposure. The only things I can think of are: avoiding overgrown hiking trails or hiking trails all together in this hot summer, wearing long pants tucked into socks and closed shoes and staying inside completely. The last option is not realistic, especially since I have a dog and I wouldn't want to anyways.