When you live in the desert, you get used to the idea that most of the plants have an elaborate protection system. But despite this apparent fierceness, you learn to live with these plants and, in my case, admire them for their independence and ability to survive. When I arrived in the East to live for a while, I was immediately advised of the danger of ticks in the forest. In the desert, that is not something I need to worry about. People who do not know the desert associate it with scorpions and poisonous snakes. Yes, they are there, but you are much more likely to end up being stuck with a cactus thorn than ever seeing a scorpion or a snake. I will take snakes and scorpions over ticks any day.
When you leave the Sonoran desert and move north up onto the Colorado Plateau in Central Arizona, the brush there has ticks...it's not as bad as Virginia or the Carolinas, but they're present.
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