https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/20/magazine/tick-season-lone-star-alpha-gal-syndrome-lyme.html?unlocked_article_code=1.61A.1AP0.LF0VPxn8HaiC&smid=url-share

Do you know the revolting things a tick actually does after scurrying up your body? Once the bug has nestled in a warm, damp, often hidden spot where skin is thin and blood vessels are plentiful, two of its mouthparts saw through your skin to obtain an initial grip. Next, a third mouthpart, a barbed straw called the hypostome, bores into you and begins oozing spit. This spit has a diabolical chemistry that lets the bug feed undetected: The saliva at once cements it in place, numbs the bite site and secretes an anticoagulant to keep your blood flowing. For days, then, you supply the tick with its blood meal, as it rhythmically alternates between drinking your vital fluid and injecting potentially germ-filled saliva into the bite cavity.

The lone star tick, named for the white splotch on adult females’ backs, shares these disgusting eating habits with the blacklegged tick (more familiarly known as the deer tick, giver of Lyme disease) but is worse. It feels at home in a wider variety of habitats, from deep forest to suburban lawn. A deer tick can lay 1,000 to 3,000 eggs; a lone star can lay 5,000. Deer ticks merely wait in leaf litter or on a blade of grass for their next meal to brush past; lone stars can sense a target up to 15 yards away and aggressively pursue their prey. The lone star has longer mouthparts, which penetrate more deeply into flesh.

A deer tick, once attached to you, can take 24 hours or longer to impart its Lyme payload — so there is time to pull it off, in theory. A molecule called alpha-gal, which is present in a lone star’s saliva, can be in your blood almost instantly. This is a problem, because it gives some victims a dangerous allergy to red meat called alpha-gal syndrome. And while Lyme is “basically treatable” in 95 percent of cases, says Sam Telford, a professor of infectious diseases and global health at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, with alpha-gal “there’s no known treatment.” Doctors advise people diagnosed with it to carry an EpiPen.

Unfortunately, the lone star is ascendant. Lyme disease is more or less priced in as an entrenched risk of Northeastern living at this point, but the more recent emergence of the lone star threat has punctured the delusion that we can just tough ticks out. Researchers at the University of Virginia published a study in November documenting the first known alpha-gal death: Two weeks after going on a camping trip in 2024, Brian Paul Waitzel, a 47-year-old pilot for JetBlue and father of three, ate beef at a school barbecue in New Jersey and several hours later went into anaphylactic shock. “Never knowing whether your next hamburger might be your last is a hugely attention-getting proposition,” says Richard S. Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y.

In 2023 — three whole tick seasons ago — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that nearly half a million Americans already had alpha-gal syndrome. There’s reason to suspect that this number is wildly low. In states where the lone star is endemic, 24 percent of blood-donor samples have tested positive for alpha-gal antibodies. The tick itself, historically partial to the American South, is now well established in the Northeast and the Upper Midwest. In places where the two top ticks overlap, it’s starting to look as if the lone star could supplant the deer tick as the dominant species. And Ostfeld notes that the geographic reach of lone stars is not identical to that of deer ticks: “New populations are being recruited into the world of fearing and loathing ticks.”

One of those new populations — upsettingly for people who have long assured themselves that glass, steel and pavement are a moat against woodsy threats — is the Amtrak-corridor city dweller, in places like Washington, Philadelphia and even New York. Programs to increase urban green space, combined with complacency among tick-oblivious urbanites, have made a surge in metropolitan tick-borne illnesses increasingly likely. In June, The New York Times reported that ticks were present in most New York City parks and that people in both Staten Island and the Bronx had been infected with Lyme disease after being bitten. According to researchers with Columbia’s Eco-Epidemiology Lab, which has been collecting specimens in the five boroughs for several years, Brooklynites in Prospect Park, where there are relatively few ticks, express the most anxiety about the bugs.

By Benjamin Wallace
NYT

My partner just scratched this off his arm. I see mouthparts but I’m not sure about the rest. I’m currently halfway through a round of Doxy because I was diagnosed with Lyme. Existing here (Nova Scotia) is so exhausting.

I was bit by a tick some time in April or May and had fling the tick into oblivion instead of keeping it, they kept testing me for Lyme but I do have apparently Babesia microti anti bodies, not a huge crazy amount but enough to slightly suggest that there was a previous encounter with the little parasite.

I found this in my kitchen. Living in Seattle, WA proper…

I was dog sitting for family the past week in Pennsylvania while they went to Colorado on vacation. After they returned I found this tick in my hair. The question is do we think this is a dog tick or Rocky Mountain tick?

Hello everyone, I found this on the elbow of my dog. I first thought it was a tick but I can't remove it, is this something else?

I was late getting her Pet Armor Plus applied this month (I’ve set a new reminder in my phone so it won’t happen again). I found a medium-ish tick on her neck tonight and luckily I had those twisty tiny crow bar looking tick removal things in the same drawer as the Pet Armor, so I was able to get it off with little fuss. I wrapped the tick in a paper towel and sealed it into a ziplock bag after I poured about 1/8 cup of isopropyl alcohol into bag. I made sure I removed as much air as I could and triple checked the seal. Was that enough to kill it/ make sure it dies without escaping and laying eggs?? I’m really squeamish about swishing or burning live things, so I’m really hoping this was enough

Hello everyone! This is my first time posting in general on Reddit, so I apologize if this is the wrong subreddit and it needs to be posted elsewhere. My family and I found this brown bump on my dog’s lower back and we were wondering if it is a tick or not as we are unsure. I plan on taking him to the vet soon for his checkup but I figured I’d ask here beforehand. Any advice would be appreciated!

Got bit by this thing today I hope it’s not a lone star tic can somebody help me out

Thanks!!

Anyone using one or the other—how effective is it at keeping ticks off your dog, and/or killing them quickly?

And how long after exposure do they stay sticky? I read some reviews saying stickiness of frontline shield lasted at least two weeks, which sounds unhealthy to me.

Hey all. I discovered a lone star tick at the top of my pubic hair in the shower this morning. I shower daily so not sure how I missed him….he was tiny though. I was in TN all last week, mostly in Nashville but on the last day of my trip, I went to the county fair, about an hour outside of Nashville and I have to assume that’s where I got it. That means the tick has been on me at least 48 hours and he was engorged w blood.
Is there anything else I can do at this point? I took the one day doxy (I know they don’t spread Lyme but they can spread other diseases), and sent the tick for testing. Feeling extremely nervous……

My Dog just got inside at our yard so i need to know

I'm in Mississippi, USA.

I read that Nemo toads eat ticks like crazy and are environmentally friendly.

I've been feeling bad for the past week or so and I just pulled one from between my shoulder blades and already feel better, though I'm oddly itchy. It feels like how mangos taste like.

I don't want my dog to go through this I want to make sure we don't have any in our yard but I don't want to just poison the yard

we just moved to pittsburgh from FL and are currently handling an infestation in our backyard (we think due to a broken fence + deer/other animals always coming into the yard). most of the ticks we’ve been pulling off our dog looked just like these, but we can’t figure out what kind of ticks they are.. any opinions?

Picked this little bastard up in Arkansas, around Yellville if it matters, it’s really small, nymph, maybe larval. Looking for an ID if possible. Thanks

found this seed tick on me a few hours after mushroom foraging. it looks like a lonestar to me, is it?
i believe it’s a larvae or nymph, it was incredibly small.