By Jordan Bowman
TheTrek.co
December 8, 2014
Forget bears, forget thunderstorms, forget things that go bump in the night: the real terror on the Appalachian Trail is the size of a sesame seed—or smaller.
The eastern deer tick (ixodes scapularis, or the “blacklegged tick”) is notoriously difficult to spot due to its minuscule size, its resemblance to a speck of dirt, and its tendency to hide on parts of your body that are hard to reach and/or see, such as under the edges of clothing or between creases in your skin. As a parasite, the tick burrows its head into the skin of a host animal and feeds off of the blood. Over time, the tick’s body becomes larger, engorged from the collected host blood in its abdomen. Once full, the tick releases from the host body and slowly digests the blood, either advancing to its next life stage or preparing to produce young.
And thus the disgusting, blood-sucking circle of life begins anew.