BlackTailedPrairieDog_Plague_Mitchell_Mark_MasonTX_21Feb2022_Reel4096.mp3

Mark Mitchell [00:00:00] One of the apprehensions some of our people had, and some of the apprehensions by some of the locals, especially the neighbors, was the concern of plague.

Mark Mitchell [00:00:10] We are all very, very familiar with plague and prairie dogs. And when you talk about plague, bubonic plague, and I'm no plague expert by any means, it's synonymous: plague and prairie dogs. And so you think that prairie dogs are the cause of plague.

Mark Mitchell [00:00:28] Well, I learned a lot through the Texas Human Health Services zoonosis branch, who we work with a lot, and through Lynda [Watson], and through other research that I've done, that plague is, is in Texas. It's pretty much throughout the counties.

Mark Mitchell [00:00:43] It got to the United States in about 1900. The first real outbreak we ever saw in Texas was around 1920 in Galveston, and it came in on ships coming from the eastern United States or Asia. Plague originated in Asia, China, somewhere over in there in the 1800s, when it was first documented. It came to America by way of ships and transmitted by small rodents, rats and mice. With a lot of the ships that left Asia, you know, they were full of rats and mice, and these rats and mice brought the disease with them. And then it's transmitted pretty much by fleas that, you know, were on a rat, that jump off that rat, on to the next rat, and as the flea bites it, it gives them the plague. And that's how it's transmitted.

Mark Mitchell [00:01:32] And so, in the port cities, back in the 1800s and early 1900s, a lot of those ports were just infested with rats and mice. And some years, you know, you'd have a lot more than others. And that was what contributed to the Galveston outbreak of bubonic plague in 1920, I think it was, summer of 1920. Even though it was considered an outbreak, I think only like seven or 10, maybe a dozen people died. It didn't kill a lot of people, but it was an outbreak.

Mark Mitchell [00:02:01] And nowadays what you see is that plague is in the environment. If they tested enough, I was told by the Texas Human Health Services, that they would probably find plague in every county of the state of Texas, if they tested enough species.

Mark Mitchell [00:02:18] But what you get with prairie dogs is a species that has no tolerance for plague. You've got, say, on 10 acres, you may have two or three hundred prairie dogs living on 10 acres. That's a high density for any animal, especially a mammal, living together.

Mark Mitchell [00:02:35] A raccoon who has had been exposed to plague comes walking through the prairie dog town. A flea jumps off that raccoon and bites a prairie dog. That prairie dog he bites and transmits the bacteria to will be dead within 72 hours, in all cases.

Mark Mitchell [00:02:54] But in that time, he's infecting a lot of other fleas that are jumping off him onto his close neighbors because they're living in the same holes, going in and out of the, sharing the holes, sharing the entrances to the holes, sharing the habitat. And so it can move very fast at a prairie dog town, killing every prairie dog it touches within 72 hours.

Mark Mitchell [00:03:17] Some species, such as Mexican ground squirrels, foxes, skunks, raccoons, coyotes, they can, they can be bitten by a flea carrying the bacteria. They can get, build up the immunity to it, but yet they can be carriers and keep it going.

Mark Mitchell [00:03:34] It's not the same way with the prairie dogs. Prairie dogs really are a dead-end host.

Mark Mitchell [00:03:39] But when you have 200 animals living on 10 acres and plague would get in it, kills 200 animals, it's very noticeable.

Mark Mitchell [00:03:48] When it kills one raccoon walking by himself through the field, or a fox by himself, it's less likely to notice it. So people they thought, you know, that the plague was in the prairie dog town and it exploded. And now the prairie dogs are making everything else sick, when actually it's the other way around. Everything else is making the prairie dogs sick.

Mark Mitchell [00:04:09] Yes, the prairie dogs get it. Yes, it kills a lot, but they're not the cause of it most of the times. So they kind of get a bad rap, an association with them and plague.