Martha’s Vineyard was already tick-conscious before the lone star species began to spread. Elizabeth Cecil / The New York Times

CHILMARK, Mass. — On Martha’s Vineyard, this was supposed to be the summer of the shark. Instead, it’s the time of the tick.

The Massachusetts island is throwing a monthslong party for the 50th birthday of “Jaws,” with tours of locations where the movie was filmed, a museum show, grinning-shark cashmere sweaters and a commemorative kale salad featuring turnips carved in the shape of sharks’ teeth.

As the season has gone on, though, great white sharks have been replaced as the Vineyard’s scariest animal. When islanders get together these days, they talk about their fears of an eight-legged creature the size of a grape seed.

Because so many islanders are allerg

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