Lone Star Tick - Amblyomma americanum

Lone Star tick

This female lone-star tick is just before releasing eggs. The count could be numbered in the hundreds. She will crawl to a cool dark spot to evacuate. Yes, it is blood but also about 50 % of the size of this tick includes the eggs as well. If you see one that is dead under the couch and seems to be shriveled a bit, then watch closely, you will more than like see her tiny offspring climbing up the walls nearby. Not a good bedtime story !

The female lone-star tick is easily mis-identified with the female American dog tick, When engorged, both have a similar white spot on the back, but if you look closer the spot on the Lone-Star tick is further up the back and is almost a greenish-yellow metallic color, unlike the white and black spot just at the back of the head on the female American dog tick....

All the years of my life spent searching for ticks on my dogs (myself and children as well) only 2 of this specimen I have found. They are very hard to detached once embedded in the skin due to the unusual length of the proboscis. Almost twice as long as the common brown ticks and dogs ticks that we are used to seeing in NC. The last female Lone-Star tick I found was about 3 years ago late summer in Eastern North Carolina.

… R C Canaday, IV , 9 July, 2007 - 1:47pm

No we don't have these in the

No we don't have these in the house.

… Sam Houston, 9 July, 2007 - 2:02pm

WOW

That's all sorts of horrifying. Maybe you should get checked out or something if that's your blood in there...

But yeah, it's this guy: http://bugguide.net/node/view/21258

… Noor Beckwith, 26 March, 2007 - 10:57pm

tick

No, it's not my blood but when I was a kid I knew another kid who had one on his head. Here in Oklahoma it's fairly common to get ticks on you but they're the small ones not these giants, but dogs get the big ones all the time. I still can't figure out how it could have been there long enough to get this big and he not know it. Not only that, if you've ever had a tick on you then you know that it itches like crazy so how could you not know, and especially if your head is five pounds heavier and you're light headed (just kidding). I do know that if you bathe everyday and shampoo your hair everyday that the chances are greatly reduced that a tick will attach itself to you or stay attached. You would think that this would be a no-brainer, especially for us country folk. You would also think that people would bathe everyday or at least make their kids take a bath but I guess stupidity knows no bounds. And these are the same mental giants that watch the tornado warnings on TV but still manage to get hit by one. PAY ATTENTION PEOPLE!

… Sam Houston, 27 March, 2007 - 7:58am