Having evaded the bites of the hundreds of leeches and that from a Malabar pit viper, we continued to search the leaf litter for snails all along the Vellachi thodai trail. Soon, we came on to a clearing which had some rocks and a very sparse understory and immediately, all of us sat down in search of the snails. Half way through the process, I came across a cream colored object which looked like a seed and I picked it up and asked Chetan as to which seed it was. As I was about to hand it over to him, I noticed that the seed which I picked up had legs! All of them came closer out of curiosity and surprise to see what seed it was the seed I had picked up turned out to be a Tick! It was easily the biggest tick which we all had ever seen-the size of a thumb finger nail and more than a centimeter thick! Soon a photo documentation session followed and all the while, the tick lay haplessly on my knee without being able to move about thanks to its own weight! The tick must have had a very good meal or must have been a gravid female with hundreds of blood thirsty young ticks waiting to see the light of the day!
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