Encased in this key chain and pendant are Dermacentor andersoni ticks, the first species identified as transmitting Rocky Mountain spotted fever. This might strike us as an odd thing to do with ticks, but these trinkets symbolize the diseases carried by insects that the scientists of the Canyon Creek Schoolhouse would go on to research, including typhus, tularemia, mosquito-borne encephalitis, and plague as well as Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

This keychain and pendant belonged to Dr. Ralph R. Parker, who played a major role in Rocky Mountain spotted fever research, and who was director of the Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana, from 1927 to 1949.