How does a tick get food from a deer without helping it?

Have you ever walked through tall grass and felt it brush and tickle your legs? Deer walk through grass like that every day. Small animals called ticks live in that grass too.

A tick is smaller than a sesame seed, and it cannot fly or jump. Yet it gets its dinner from a big deer, and the deer gets nothing back. So how does a tick get food from a deer without helping it?

A tick is a parasite, which means an animal that lives on another animal and feeds from its body. For this tick, that other animal is a deer. The deer's blood is the tick's whole meal.

First, the tick climbs to the very tip of a grass blade. There it holds on with its back legs and stretches its front legs wide. It cannot chase a deer, so it waits for one to come close.

While it waits, the tick smells and feels the air with its front legs. They pick up a deer's warm breath and body heat as it walks near. That tells the tick it is time to grab.

The deer brushes past, and swish, the tick hooks onto its fur. Its legs end in tiny claws that catch hairs the way a sticky seed clings to your sock. Now the parasite rides along, and the deer never notices.

Next, the tick crawls through the fur to find thin skin, inside an ear or on the neck. Thin skin is easier to cut, and the blood flows close underneath.

Then the tick cuts a small hole with sharp parts on its mouth. It pushes in a short tube covered in backward hooks, so it stays stuck tight. A cut like that might sting, and the deer could scratch the tick away. How do you think the tick keeps the deer from feeling it?

The tick's spit is the secret. As it bites, the tick puts spit into the skin, and the spit makes the spot go numb. The deer feels no pain, so it keeps on munching grass.

Its spit does one more job. When you scrape your knee, your blood gets thick and stops flowing. Tick spit keeps the deer's blood from getting thick, so it keeps flowing into the tick's mouth.

Slowly and quietly, the tick drinks for several days. Its soft body stretches and swells, from the size of a seed to the size of a pea.

All that time, the deer gives its blood and gets no help in return. The tick does not clean the deer or keep it safe; it only takes. Taking without giving back is just how a parasite lives.

Let's remember our word: parasite. A tick waits on the grass, grabs a passing deer, numbs its skin with spit and quietly drinks its blood without giving anything back.

Sleep well, and may your dreams be full of soft meadows and gentle deer.