Sit Back From the Edge of Your Seat

Well, first off, I get to say that everyone was wrong! But, if you guessed a pomegranate, you were at least in the ballpark, because it is a fruit. I had never seen the insides of this fruit. I wonder how many people have. It's part of the inside of a papaya. If you had seen this photo with color, would you have known?


Now for the juicy part. It comes from parasitology lab, so if you're squeamish, you might want to skip this.

I've never seen a bloated tick, alive. I once saw one skittering across a walkway at Cascade Springs in Utah. I think my cat had them regularly in Massachusetts. We lived in a heavily wooded area. But, I spent my time around ticks in the Parasitology Lab at BYU, I first took the class while doubling up as a teaching assistant and then TA'ed the class two more times. We had loads of ticks as they look when they've loaded up on blood. These papaya seeds made me take a double take when I looked down and "saw" rows of bloated ticks (sans the heads, but you wouldn't see those anyway, if they were buried in their hosts). Then I remembered the papaya Joseph had cut up for dinner. So, I grabbed it out for a photo. I had planned on writing about how we all see things in a different way blah, blah, blah!

Bloated ticks are usually larger than these seeds and also some have a somewhat wrinkly look about them. It was the seeds with the wrinkly look that I saw first.