Newby - Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Warfare

Off Marthas Vineyard, Massachusetts, 2002

Ticks may be a disease-carrying menace for hikers and pets, but theyre also masters of survival: The parasites were sucking the blood of dinosaurs 99 million years ago, according to a set of amber fossils from Myanmar.

Science magazine, December 12, 2017

A tiny eight-legged creature slowly crept up a blade of beach grass. It was about the size of a poppy seed, armored with a hard, shiny shell. When it reached the blades tip, the rear legs clamped down and the creature raised its forelegs high and wide toward the sky. It was blind, and it experienced the world through these forelegs. could detect temperature changes, humidity, ammonia in sweat, and carbon dioxide in breath. The tick was sniffing the air for these signals, waiting for a warm-blooded animal to pass by. It could wait hours, days, or even months, swaying with the sea breeze.

* * *

I climbed out of a cobalt-blue sailboat and onto a misty beach on Nashawena Island, located across the channel from Marthas Vineyard, followed by my husband, Paul, and our two sons, ten and twelve years old. The boys ran off to play in the surf, while Paul and I walked down a sandy path to look around the small island of thirteen square miles, population ten. We saw an old military gun mount and a cowherds cottage, where two rust-colored Scottish Highland cows, dull-eyed and mangy, stood at the edge of a soupy, algae-filled pond.

We walked back to the beach to eat a picnic lunch with the boys, and I looked over at Paul, slim and fit, with big brown eyes and a few strands of silver woven throughout his dark hair. He was as relaxed as Id seen him in a long time. The Silicon Valley start-up where he worked had recently gone public, and we had enough stock options to finally feel some financial relief. We wouldnt have to sweat the monthly cash flow, and probably had enough put aside to cover the boys college tuition. After this vacation, I was going to ramp down my consulting business and try my hand as a full-time writer. Id just won two national writing contests, and the kids were doing well; both were bright, creative, and happy. This would be my shot at doing what I loved most: writing.

* * *

When the carbon dioxide from my breath wafted by, the tick sprang to attention. It began waving its foreleg claws and snagged the skin of the passing mammal. In an instant, the glands below its claws began oozing a fatty, sticky substance that helped it hold on to my leg. Then it started crawling upward, its senses tuned to find a protected, blood-infused patch of skin.

The tick found the perfect spot at the nape of my neck, hidden under my hair. The back legs elevated the ticks mouthparts at the perfect striking angle, and its three-part jaw telescoped down toward my skin. First, its top two cutting mouthparts gently scraped the surface while releasing a numbing agent. Then, by rocking its body back and forth, the tick began digging through my tough outer layer of skin. Its bottom jaw, shaped like a shovel and backed with harpoon barbs, slid into the hole to anchor the drilling operation.

Once a feeding hole was established, the ticks salivary glands secreted chemicals into the wound site. A cement-like substance, coated with a protein that made it invisible to my immune system, hardened into a funnel and anchored the jaws to the hole.

As blood pooled at the bottom of the hole, the ticks throat muscles began a pumping action: saliva flowed out, my blood flowed in. Chemicals in the saliva included a clot-dissolving fluid that kept the wound from scabbing over and others that suppressed my many immune system defenses.

While the tick fed, it released into my bloodstream the microbial hitchhikers floating inside its body. Its salivary chemicals would blunt my immune defenses for a week or more, allowing these foreign invaders to multiply with little resistance.