The Ticks Are Winning
Their saliva is a secret weapon.
In the three-plus decades I've been alive, I have never been bitten by a tick. Actually, that may be a lie, and I have no way of knowing for sure. Because even though ticks have harpoonlike mouthparts, even though certain species can latch on for up to two weeks, even though some guzzle enough blood to swell 100 times in weight, their bites are disturbingly discreet. “As a kid, I would have hundreds of ticks on me,” at least several of which would bite, says Adela Oliva Chavez, a tick researcher at Texas A&M University. And yet she would never notice until her aunt would pick them off her skin.
The secret behind tick stealth is tick —a strange, slippery, and multifaceted fluid with no biological peer It keeps
