If your revulsion of deer ticks does not preclude some intellectual curiosity about them, I highly recommend this article.  It has some of the cutsie-pie-isms endemic to science journalism, but also covers most of the bases of tick natural history.  Fascinating, and enlightening.

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Recently I was asked if birds get Lyme disease, and I answered "No, because birds don't get bitten by deer ticks." I was wrong. Not only do some birds get deer ticks, but in one study 32 species of birds were found to be carrying 9 different species of ticks, including ticks that predominantly feed on rabbits, and mice. There is some anxiety in ( Read more... )

I'd probably be accused of being a bigot if I said that modern country music fans were the kind of people whose idea of courtship is to offer to clean ectoparasites off one another, but click this link and hear the proof.

Link thanks to brush_rat, whose attraction to novelty music is like some kind of radar ( Read more... )

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