On a hot summer afternoon, 3-year-old Emmalee was playing in a backyard sprinkler to cool off. Her mom, Beka Setzer, of Meigs, Ohio, called her inside to take a nap. When she started changing her daughter's damp clothes, she noticed hundreds of tiny black dots up and down her legs.
It's called a seed tick, the larval form of a tick, and it can be found in groups of thousands.
Setzer spent hours picking each individual insect off her daughter's skin.
After successfully removing all of the ticks from the little girl's body, Setzer repeatedly bathed her daughter in dish soap and administered Benadryl to alleviate any upcoming allergic reaction. She then found the nest of seed ticks where her daughter had been playing and used a topical insecticide on the entire area to kill the critters.
The next morning, Emmalee was covered in small red welts, a reaction from each individual bite. She had a fever, was lethargic and had a large swollen lymph node. Setzer immediately rushed her to the emergency room, where she was tested for Lyme disease.
The test came back negative, but doctors didn't want to take chances and was started on two months of antibiotics.