What Tick Eggs REALLY Look Like

You have probably seen this post circulating around Facebook the past few weeks. So we looked further into it. 

On our walk today, I noticed a weird clump of black "balls" on the path. I took a picture of it and when I got home, I was able to zoom in on the picture and noticed a couple of little red ticks. I googled 'tick eggs' and that's what the black clump was! Tick eggs! Yuck. If I had known, I would have smashed them. ugh

Most likely berries in fecal matter

In spring and summer months, warnings about tick-borne illnesses are spread in regions of the United States where ticks are prevalent. In 2015, increased concern over the Powassan virus (contracted via ticks) heightened the spread of warnings about ticks and the diseases harbored by them. 

In early April 2015, the photograph displayed above began circulating on Facebook with several explanations appended to it. In some iterations, the user who shared the image reportedly spotted the unusual clump and later Googled the image to find out what it was; in others, the user identified the depicted substance as tick eggs and warned fellow Facebook users to "burn" the eggs on sight. The photograph was often identified by those who shared it as "local" in states as distant from one another as Texas and New York. 

This photograph was widely shared via social media in mid-April 2015, but soon afterwards many of the links to it were missing, unavailable, or deleted, possibly due to skepticism expressed by many viewers who commented on the image when their friends and Facebook group members shared it. 

What's shown in the picture above does resemble tick eggs to some degree.  Below are photos of actual Tick eggs. 

Deer Tick Eggs

Viewers debated the size of the purported clump of tick eggs relative to an actual tick and suggested that the depicted mass was likelier partially digested berries or amphibian eggs. Whatever the photograph depicts is likely something in which one should avoid stepping, but the image doesn't seem to line up with other photographs of any breed of tick eggs. 

Use your own judgement, but I will be removing any eggs that I find because whether it be ticks or any other insect, I do not want it in or around my home.