'I'd never been bitten by a tick before': why the little blood-sucking pest is getting us into a panic

They're hard to spot, they're hungry and they're spreading disease from the Highlands to urban parks: a special report on the increasing threat posed by ticksLast summer I took my family on a walk through the woodlands that surround the hamlet of Ebernoe, in Sussex. My children clambered on fallen trees, my partner and I hunted for mushrooms, and all the while we were being hunted by creatures more ancient than the last dinosaurs - and so hungry they would have fed on us for days.In Ebernoe, as across the UK, ticks are on the rise. That day, we came home covered in them. One had sunk its serrated mouthparts into the back of my knee. My wife had one feeding on her flank. Yet another was lodged firmly in the dumpling-smooth skin of my one-year-old's neck, its rear legs waggling as it sucked. Continue reading...