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Health officials trying to stop plague from gaining ground

By Bill McKeown/The Gazette

Health officials Wednesday worked to prevent the spread of bubonic plague in southeast Colorado Springs as they awaited tests to determine whether the disease killed a 28-year-old man.

The confirmation Tuesday that prairie dogs in and around the Colorado Centre subdivision were infected with plague spurred more than a hundred calls to the El Paso County Department of Health and Environment from worried residents and from media nationwide.
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Officials have taped off a vacant field near the subdivision southeast of the Colorado Springs Airport and are spraying insecticide down burrows to kill fleas living on prairie dogs.
The plague is transmitted through the fleas. It can also be transmitted by direct contact with sick or dead animals. Humans and cats are susceptible. Dogs cannot catch it but can carry the infected fleas.
Officials also have posted signs and handed out fliers to residents of the 1,000-home subdivision warning them to keep their pets inside or on a leash and prevent their children from playing near the field.
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Officials said the plague has killed hundreds of prairie dogs in the field during the past week.
Whether it killed the 28-year-old man, who lived and biked in the area, won't be known until tissue samples are analyzed. Those tests could have been completed as soon as late Wednesday or may take up to two weeks, said Dr. Tisha Dowe, director of the Health Department. Dowe said the man, whose identity has not been released, was embalmed, a process that could slow tests to determine the presence of plague.
El Paso County's coroner, Dr. David Bowerman, said Tuesday he didn't think the man had plague. Dowe said Bowerman suspected the man died of a severe case of streptococcus, a bacterial infection. However, Dowe said plague also can cause the same infection if left untreated.
Health officials said about 20 people are being treated with antibiotics as a preventive measure, including friends and relatives who came in contact with the man who died Monday and residents of Colorado Centre who may have come into contact with animals carrying plague-infected fleas.
Four cases of plague in humans have been confirmed in El Paso County since the late 1800s, with two of the victims dying. The most recent death occurred in 1984, when a 14-month-old child, a doctor's daughter, died after apparently coming in contact with infected squirrels at the Air Force Academy.
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Two newer residents of the neighborhood were taking the plague outbreak in stride -- sort of.
"It's not cool that all this is happening, but I'm not too worried," said Pat Sweeney.
His wife was a little less sanguine:
"Tornadoes, hail, plague -- why did we move here?" said Deb Sweeney.

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Somehow, someway, this has to be Focus on the Family's fault.

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"Tornadoes, hail, plague -- why did we move here?" said Deb Sweeney.

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 So, naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite ’em;
And so proceed ad infinitum.

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Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.

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Beethoven also wrote a song about the flea,
which starts out, "Once there was a king, who had a great flea..." Since it was the king's flea, all the court had to put up with it biting them.

Gotta go: time to feed the circus.

I actually knew someone whose cousin died from the plague, in New Mexico in the 1980's. That's when the "New Mexico-Land Of The Plague, Home Of The Flea" bumperstickers became popular. (And where I stole it from, despite living far away from New Mexico, for the FROM in my profile.)
It's ANOTHER reason to have only indoor cats!

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Originally posted by Kathy B:
A nice overview of plague here.

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Only on the internet does the phrase "nice overview of plague here" exist.

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Are they as petrified about it out there yet as when Lyme disease scares were big or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever during the 80's?

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I don't think people in the West get petrified about plague. Unless you are in an area that is being actively treated with insecticide and antibiotics, you don't pay that much attention. If you grow up hanging out in the boondocks near the Navajo reservation you are brainwashed into never going near any animal that will let you approach. Plague is just one of the nasties that those "tame" animals could be carrying. There's also rabies, tularemia, and probably other bad things. I was taught to take rubber gloves when I went hunting in case I shot a rabbit, in case of tularemia.

Of course, there's all those ignoramuses who move to the West without bothering to find out what's out there that can get them into trouble. Like the fellow who moved into a house on the border of the national park and then was surprised when the coyotes got his free-roaming cat.

That said, we don't worry much about plague here. A few years ago there was a big stir when some people on the Navajo Reservation died mysteriously of a flu-like illness; USA Today labeled it "Navajo Flu" in its headlines. A California school group canceled its tour of the Navajo nation but it was soon discovered that the disease--Hantavirus--was spread by those adorable big eared deer mice which live all over the U.S.

OK tourists, do you want to know what you really need to worry about out here? Forget mice, prairie dogs and cougars and watch out for drunk drivers. Stay off the roads between 12:00 AM and 11:59 PM weekdays and also Saturdays and Sundays; stay home all working days of the year as well as holidays;
also avoid walking on the sidewalk as much as is humanly possible.