TICK FEST: They are not vampires, but they will suck your blood and leave you ill.

Ticks pose an ever-increasing threat to the health of residents, and to help spread awareness of the Lyme disease-carrying critters, the McKean County Historical Society has organized a Kinzua Country Tick Fest.

The festival will be held from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday at Kinzua Bridge State Park.

The “tick unfriendly—family friendly” event is free to attend.

Attendees can listen to presentations on tick ecology, diseases and related medical issues from 1 to 3 p.m. Balancing the creepy-crawly — but important — informational sessions will be fun activities such as food and games. There will be live music from 3:30 to 5 p.m.

Organizers say anyone who spends time outdoors, such as gardeners, walkers, hunters, hikers and fishermen, would benefit.

“Like the weather, everybody talks about ticks but no one does much about them,” organizers noted in a press release. “Many remember a childhood growing up in McKean County — some 20 years or more ago — when encountering a tick was rare. You could play in the woods all day and never get one on you. That is no longer true.

“Today, few people haven’t heard about ticks, their dramatic increase in abundance and the diseases they can give us, especially Lyme Disease, named after Lyme, Connecticut, where it was first identified. It is likely that many reading this press release have, at some time, had a tick on them and possibly, contracted a disease.

“Sadly, not treating tick borne disease soon enough can result in serious, lifelong debilitating effects of Lyme disease or other serious tick-borne diseases.”

Among the presenters will be a Dare 2B Tick Aware instructor from the PA Lyme Resource Network.

Come for the educational talks, stay for the silly food and games.

What could be more fun than a snack of ticks-on-a-stick and lymeade, followed by a rowdy 3-legged tick race or a game of count-the-ticks-in-the-jar?