collapsedsquid:

Ravenous swarms of cloned ticks have killed a fifth cow in North Carolina by exsanguination—that is, by draining it of blood—the state’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services warned this week.

Experts fear that the bloodthirsty throngs, which were first noticed in the United States in 2017, will continue their rampage, siphoning life out of animals and eventually transmitting diseases, potentially deadly ones, to humans.

Need to get enough vaccinations to kill any tick that tries.

Oh is thaaaaat why Congress is demanding the defense department say if it weaponized ticks? I thought it was about Lyme disease, I remember hearing a plausible theory that when that emerged in the northeast the epidemic was centered on a facility for biological weapons “defense” in an era when the US was thinking up ways to attack the Soviet cattle herds and grain crops