When Kerry Bush rolled through a pile of leaves outside her family's northern Virginia home, it was a picture-perfect childhood moment. Unfortunately, this all-American snapshot nearly caused the young girl to suffer from a serious illness – one that few people expect to find in the average backyard.

The culprit? Ticks. In Kerry Bush's case, three of nature's stealthiest predators attached to her skin and, undetected until the next day, set in motion a series of symptoms ranging from swelling and fever to a mysterious rash.

The ticks that attached to her scalp and back are among the most common insects to affect children, says Dr. Richard Falco, a medical entomologist at Fordham University's Louis Calder Center in Armonk, N.Y.

While having a creature attach itself without invitation is enough to make one's skin crawl, there are more serious reasons to avoid the bite of a tick. "Tick bites are a concern because of the potential for ticks to transmit infectious diseases such as Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever," Dr. Falco says, who adds that tick bites also put people at risk for lesser-known diseases such as babesiosis, which is a parasitic infection, or ehlerchia, which is an infectious blood disease.

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