Monday, May 21, 2007
The Black Death Arrives in Denver
The Bubonic Plague, an enterobacteria which in its first vector blocks the stomach flow of the flea that has it, so that the flea, no matter how much blood it sucks, is always ravenous and ready to leave the host and hop to another, thus passing on the disease, has never really left. It lives on in rodent populations (like prairie dogs) and has been in the American West for a long time now. Since squirrels are just arboreal rats, they get it too; and one unlucky squirrel has passed on the Black Death, the scourge of 14th Century Europe, to some hooded capuchin monkeys in the Denver Zoo, or at least to the one that ate the infected squirrel.
No one is exactly running for the hills. I guess we don't need to. We have powerful anti-biotics.
UPDATE: I originally called the plague a virus. My mistake.
No one is exactly running for the hills. I guess we don't need to. We have powerful anti-biotics.
UPDATE: I originally called the plague a virus. My mistake.
Labels: Bubonic Plague
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 10:33 PM 
