Ticks belong to the class Arachnida, which includes spiders, scorpions, and mites. Ticks have four life stages: egg, larvae, nymph, and adult. The larvae have six legs while the nymphs and the adults have eight. Ticks are divided into two families, "soft" ticks, Argasidae and "hard" ticks, Ixodiae. The most common ticks found outdoors in the West Valley area are the Western Black-Legged tick, Ixodes pacificus , the Pacific Coast tick, Dermacentor occidentalis, and the American Dog tick, Dermacentor variabilis.

The only source of nutrition that ticks use is the blood sucked from their hosts. Ticks are found wherever their hosts are found. Some ticks feed on only one type of host, while others suck blood from many different animals. When not attached and feeding on their hosts, most hard ticks live on the ground in vegetation, such as grassy meadows, woods, brush, weeds, and leaf litter. Most ticks will crawl to the tips of grasses, brush, leaves, or branches and wait. With their front legs outstretched, they will wait for a host to brush up against them. This behavior is called questing. When the tick does come into contact with an animal, it will grab on and crawl to an appropriate area on the animal to feed.

The Western Black-Legged tick is the vector of Lyme disease in the western United States, while the Pacific Coast tick carries tularemia and germs and is a suspected carrier of Rocky Mountain spotted fever and Colorado tick fever causative agents.

For more information on ticks check out these websites
http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/guineafowllyme.htm
http://www.ziplink.net/~jcwheel/lymedisease/the_tick/tick_main.htm