This is one of my preserved Lone Star Ticks from my archive. Ticks and I have a "love/hate relationship". They love to dine on me and I hate the S.O.B's..! I spend a lot of time in the weeds and woods looking for opportunities to photograph wildflowers and insects so I tend to attract a lot of ticks despite dousing myself with repellent (by the way...do not get any of the repellents on your leather car seats! My Better Half reminds me of that each time we get in the car now..again, again, and again).

This one thought that where my butt cheek meets my leg would be a good place to attach itself until I felt an itch and discovered it. I pulled it off me and stored it in alcohol to teach it a lesson.

If one has ever wondered how they attach themselves to their host (or my butt), this is an illustration of the mouthparts of a tick (Credit STEVE GSCHMEISSNER / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY) taken with an electron scanning microscope. These parts are covered by the palps that can be seen in my image. The hooks are used to push flesh aside and to grab and hold on. The mouthpart that that does the "sucking" is the hypostome. This is where it introduces bacteria and enzymes that can cause diseases such as Lyme and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

The two indented "circles" above its mouthparts are used to sense carbon dioxide along with the waving of their front legs which attracts the tick to something warm-blooded. Its eyes can be seen as those bright smooth spots on the sides of its body.

They can live for an average of three years and a tick needs only eat three times in its lifecycle. Once to go from larvae to nymph and then from nymph to adult and then for a female to lay her eggs. For a tick, it's a waiting game for the host much come close enough for the tick to climb aboard. After all, what else does it have to do all day?