The USDA Just Shared An Unhinged Photo Of A Muffin To Warn About Ticks—And We're Not Okay

The USDA Forest Service may have ruined the chances of us ever eating a poppy seed muffin again.

In a public service announcement-style post on X, the official USDA Forest Service account wanted to remind the public about tick season, especially that ticks can be incredibly hard to spot—though people may not have realized just how hard until now.

To demonstrate, the post included a photo of a delicious-looking poppy seed muffin that's just guaranteed to contain the perfect amount of lemon essence.

But then they ruined the urge to get one from the nearest bakery when they wrote:

"Ticks can be as small as a poppy seed."

"There are five ticks in this photo. Can you spot them?"

In a companion photo, a zoomed in image shows five ticks circled in red, and they were indeed just as small as the poppy seeds, their legs so thin that they were hardly visible.

You can check out the post here:

The reactions to the post were, of course, priceless.

Some were surprised that ticks were actually that small and hard to identify, while others couldn't help but imagine that there are bakeries out there either willingly adding ticks to their muffins or being infested with them and continuing to bake anyway.

None of which are pleasant thoughts.

However, it's important to be educated about possibilities like this—not that someone will accidentally buy a tick muffin, but that they might go somewhere during the summer that has ticks, and they might be more difficult to detect than originally expected.

Obviously, this was just a demonstration to show how small ticks can be, and it certainly doesn't mean we should worry about tiny ticks hiding in muffins and blending in with the seeds.

Also obviously, we probably won't purchase a muffin for a while—at least not a poppy seed one!