It seems to me that what we want is something like this but spread through the deer and mouse populations instead. Because in the case of lyme spreading ticks,

It seems to me that what we want is something like this but spread through the deer and mouse populations instead. Because in the case of lyme spreading ticks, their (complicated) lifecycle involves both of those populations. Deer carry huge populations of ticks. If drops of food laced with this kind of thing were given to deer, I'd expect it to drop the tick populations significantly. Without risk of human side effects. That and we need to cull deer populations and encourage predators of mice generally.