I had my first snake, a diamond python called Dracula in 1987. A friend of my boss caught it for me because everyone knew I loved reptiles. I already had turtles and lizards. Unfortunately it died a week or so later and after it was dead, heaps of ticks? crawled out from under the scales. Must have been already full of them when it was caught. In the time I had it, I did see one near it's eye. I took it to the vet and they tried to get rid of me really quickly - they had no idea. Stood as far away from it as they could and used tweezers to pull the tick off. I asked them to check over it to see if there were any more and they said no, it would be alright. Well, it wasn't.