February tick

Obviously slugs were not the only critters that were woken up from their winter slumber by the unusually warm weather during the first half of this week. I found this deer tick (Ixodes scapularis) crawling up my pants' leg late Wednesday afternoon in the woods. It was moving up my leg surprisingly fast for a tick. Perhaps it had a way of sensing that to get a head start in the game of reproduction it needed to latch on to a warm mammal quickly before the freezing temperatures returned.

Luckily I saw it before it could locate a passageway thru my pants to my tender skin. I left it on a nearby log. Maybe a deer passed by that spot during the night.