Jen made some excellent points about Lyme's disease, and included a great website! I kept that part of her email in this one, so you could check it out now if you didn't when she sent it. :-) An interesting fact about Lyme's (that my family learned the hard way--on my poor then-4-year-old) is that the telltale ring rash does not always display at the bite site. In fact, we found the tick and pulled it off, and she had over 2 dozen rings, _none_ of which presented at the bite site! Fortunately, we were living in rural Massachusetts at the time, and all of the doctors there knew a whole lot about the idiosyncracies of Lyme's disease, having dealt with it for many years (we were not so far from Lyme, CT). Long pants in the woods, folks, and let's keep track of the local deer population! --Emily King Ave *Lyme Disease*

Lyme disease can be carried by what we known as the deer tick, but is also called the blacklegged tick. Although this is the most common type of tick in Allegheny County, reports of Lyme disease in our area are relatively low compared to other areas.

It's important to note that because of diagnosis issues and a broader controversy, Lyme is very much under reported. I personally know of multiple people who have contracted lyme from ticks in the highland/frick area (obviously anecdotal evidence, but still something to consider).

The County’s entomologist said that there is a lot of good information about ticks online, particularly on webpages associated with universities. I found the following page on Penn State’s website which had some technical information on ticks and Lyme disease: http://ento.psu.edu/extension/factsheets/ticks

Here is another resource specifically about lyme disease: http://www.lymediseaseassociation.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=552&Itemid=27