Red Fox and a Stone Marten are traditional predators of mice that can carry Lyme Disease. The article should also mention that raccoons, skunks and opossums are too.
Stop killing deer to control Lyme Disease – it doesn’t work.
“If the study’s results are borne out by more research, public health officials might be moved to try interventions like protecting foxes or factoring the habitat needs of particular predators into land-use decisions to foster their population size. Nothing else — like culling deer or spraying lawns with tick-killing pesticide — has worked so far to stem the incidence of tick-borne disease, which is spreading in the Midwestern United States,….” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/science/ticks-lyme-disease-foxes-martens.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article

When the balance of Nature is interrupted, this is what happens.