Comment by slicktux
7 months ago
I recall being on a road trip and was at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains; was getting ready to camp at a random camp site and noticed a sign warning or squirrels that carry bubonic plague via fleas… Scary..
It’s not usually very bad. My wife used to do epidemiology in Utah, and the four corner states have a few plague cases every year. Very easy to get from prairie dogs as well. Iirc, prairie dog colonies are separated based on which ones have the plague and which don’t.
I hope that the black footed ferret reintroduction efforts are successful (https://www.fws.gov/project/black-footed-ferret-recovery). There would be a lot less plague out there if so.
Lime disease has a similar relationship with predators that eat mice, so let's also keep an eye out for the owls and snakes.
Wonder if the same fleas that affect prarie dogs will also be at home on them?
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How would reintroducing the black footed ferret reduce the plague ? It's not stated in that link.
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>Lime disease Ah yes, good old Lime Disease, named after the town it was invented in, "Lime, Connecticut", Abraham Lime 1898, former student of Koch's lab in Germany.
> Iirc, prairie dog colonies are separated based on which ones have the plague and which don’t.
Do you mean 'naturally' by their own selection, or some external means?
I read it as someone keeps track of it for public safety
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When you say it's easy to get from prairie dogs, how exactly does that happen? Is it like, you're camping, and a prairie dog gets into your tent? How exactly does that people get exposed to a prairie dog?
It's not the prairie dogs themselves, but the fleas on the dogs. The carriers for the plague are fleas.
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It's usually people whose job (or I guess hobby) involves managing prairie dogs. It's not usually ordinary civilians.