I mean, this isn't the sort of thing you get taught about in the Boy Scouts. It's the sort of thing you use as a scare tactic to freak people out around campfires. It should not ever happen in real life. To the tick, I was just another host, something to suck some blood from, maybe give a little Lyme disease to, then drop off engorged and wait for the slimdown before the next host rolled on through. The insects feed off every organism they can.
Animals eat each other.
We, at the relative top of our food chain, could be seen as something crossed between remora fish and cancer from the organic perspective of the planet as a whole. Not a lot more sophisticated than the tick, or a remora fish, or cancer, and probably not any more memorable in the long run, in spite of what our collective ego might say about us right now. None of this should feel creepy - how the ticks feed, how cancer spreads, or how quickly we are filling up this planet. None of it. Sound off on our messageboard.