It's the deer.

[Guest guest]

On the lymeinfo list or one of its associated lists, a moderator named Rose and

I have been having a discussion about why lyme disease and other tick borne

diseases are " emerging " at this time.

I suggested that in my part of Texas, development is taking place very rapidly

and in a classically modern yuppie fashion. Housing developments are going up

every place within 40 miles of the Austin metropolitan area, since yuppies

prefer to live in a rural setting. These housing developments bring large

numbers and concentrations of people into an ecosystem formerly inhabited

sparsely by farmers and small villages. Teh housing developments on the outer

ring of Austin and its adjacent suburbs actually sit between fields and woodland

areas.

Rose found the following to report.

*********************************

The numbers also show that Connecticut, with 136 cases of confirmed

Lyme disease per 100,000 people, has the highest rate of Lyme

infection in the United States.

Two of the four counties in the northern tier of the state were the

worst places to live in Connecticut, when it comes to Lyme. Windham

County had 447 cases per 100,000 people; Litchfield County, 371 cases

per 100,000. New London County, with 247 cases per 100,000 people and

Tolland County, with 243, were almost equally bad.

Fairfield County had 148 cases per 100,000 people in 2002. But

because there are a lot more people living in it than in the state's

rural corners, it had 1,313 cases reported in total. That's nearly

twice the 677 cases reported in Litchfield County, which had the

second-highest total.

" Fairfield County is amazing, when you think of all the homes there

sitting next to the woods, " Cartter said. " It's that edge - where the

backyard meets the woods - where there are deer and ticks. "

Cartter admitted the state numbers are deceptively low.

" For every reported case, there are probably 10 people who get

treated for Lyme disease by their family physician and those cases

never get reported, " he said.

When people get infected with the Lyme bacteria, they usually get flu-

like symptoms - a high fever, headache and aching joints - without a

cough. They often - but not always - get a tell-tale, `bull's-eye'

rash spreading from the site of the tick bite. Of the 4,631 confirmed

cases reported to the state in 2002, about 2,700 had such a rash. And

because the black-legged tick in its nymphal stage is so tiny, it's

easy to miss the embedded tick.

**********************************

In Texas the lone star tick is the main carrier of lyme disease; it's small, I

think reddish, and it has a white spot on its back. But I think dogs can get

it from dog ticks. I found one of them critters on my cat, who at the time was

standing three feet from my housemate's dog pen.

In any case, Rawlings of teh Epidemiology unit of the state health

department says that lone star ticks aren't normally found in peoples' back

yards unless family pets who are allowed off property bring it there.

This doesn't take account of teh large number of peoples' yards who are adjacent

to wild fields and woodland.

It also doesn't take account of the deer.

Ticks don't carry emerging diseases by themselves. The ticks and the diseases

are part of an ecosystem. Emerging diseases usually result from human activity

disturbing the ecosystem.

Here is how it works. I don't have the details down - but by the end of the

day, I probably will. Baby tick is called a nymph. It has to suck blood from

certain mammals who are its hosts at that stage. Then it is an adult tick, and

it has to suck blood from certain mammals, not necessarily the same ones, who

are its hosts at that stage. Then I guess it lays eggs and dies.

OK, for this cycle to happen, there have to be ticks. There also have to be

host mammals. For disease to be widespread, it also helps if the host animals

are overcrowded and possibly as a result poorly fed.

I had thought that the extremes described in the above article were confined to

where I live. In Austin, we have liberalism run far over the edge and fell off

the cliff - which is the first time I've ever seen liberalism prove dangerous to

the public welfare. I'm very left wing myself. One left wing belief that I

don't share but most people in the Austin area do, is that it is absolute

anathema to own or use a gun for any reason. At times it is truly bizarre; for

instance, my brother in law is more often right wing, and his views on both

taxes and abortion are exactly as extreme. As for guns and safety, in rural

upstate New York, I was taught basic gun safety by my father. Never go near a

window if you hear gun fire. Always wear bright clothes when walking in the

woods so the hunters don't think you are a squirrel - and my father always wore

a bright red hunting jacket in the woods. Basic common sense sorts of things.

None of this, if hunters hunt a half mile from here our children will be shot by

accident.

Deer are our friends here. We would never harm a deer. Noone wants to allow

guns or hunting, either. Northwest of Austin, they are very severely

overpopulated. If you go for a walk in the fields and woods adjacent to my NOT

yuppie sister's property, you find the ground littered with deer footprints

packed more densely than acorns, everywhere, and you meet 10 deer, standing and

staring at you. If my sister's dogs are out, chasing deer, what else, three of

the critters can be found grazing on our front lawn.

In the nearby town of Lago Vista, deer roam the streets and graze on herds on

peoples' front lawns. Some people grow the favorite plants of deer for them to

eat!

Not very far north of Austin, maybe 50 miles or so, is a small rural town called

Fort Hood, which has a major military base. The military did a study of ticks

and lyme disease, and here were their findings on Fort Hood.

********************************************************************

LYME DISEASE AND OTHER TICK-BORNE DISEASE RISK ASSESSMENT,

FORT HOOD, TEXAS, 6-21 NOVEMBER 1993

DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY

U.S. Army Environmental Hygiene Activity - South

SOME Risk

a. Blood Serum Samples. Serum samples were obtained from approximately

100 white-tailed deer. Seropositive analyses were found for Lyme disease,

6 of 100 (6.0%), Rocky Mountain spotted fever, 10 of 98 (10.2%), and human

ehrlichiosis, 65 of 100 (65%). Deer sera analysis are furnished at Appendix

D.

b. Tick Samples. Ticks were collected from 65 of 100 (65%) deer

examined. There were 742 adult ticks and 1 tick nymph identified and

assayed. The species collected, their life stages and the number testing

postitive or negative for spirochetes are shown at Appendix E. The species

collected, life stages and the number testing postitive or negative for

rickettsiae are shown at Appendix F. Five species of ticks were collected;

lone star tick [Amblyomma americanum (Linnaeus)], black-legged tick

[ixodes scapularis (Say)], winter tick [Dermacentor albipictus (Packard)],

brown winter tick [Dermacentor nigrolineatus (Packard)], and American dog

tick [Dermacentor variabilis (Say)]. None of the 467 ticks assayed were

found to contain Borrelia species spirochetes. There were 61 of 743 (8.2%)

ticks found to contain Rickettsia rickettsii rickettsiae.

********************************************************************

These findings are a little mixed; with my weak knowledge, it could be that

smaller animals are serving as a host for the ticks who infect the deer with

lyme disease. But basically, 6% of these deer in Central Texas scrubland near

Austin carry lyme disease, 10% of them carry rocky mountain spotted fever.

Human ehrlichiosis must be the next emerging disease around here. We know it is

coming - but noone has ever heard of it, let alone our doctors! Dog

ehrlichiosis, which as someone explained to me while trying not to answer the

question I had asked, is a different germ and humans can't get it, is already

common around Austin - and in a belt stretching northeast from Austin across

northeastern Texas.

Someone else wrote me that she lives in a small village just east of Waco. The

local weekly newspaper ran an article about her and her dog both having lyme

disease. I believe her husband had it, as well. 15 other people in the

village including the reporter who did the story turned out to also have lyme

disease. Waco is also in the Central Texas ecosystem, maybe 80 miles north of

Austin. It is on the edge of the black plains or rolling plains or wahtever

ecosystem, though (on the other side fo the Austin chalk bed, before the

Balcones fault that begins the central plateau), and possibly drawing rocky

mountain spotted fever from the northeast. What is going on to lead to this

outbreak? The basic forest, fields and deer situation is there.

Even though for years yuppies have been rapidly expanding the population of the

little Adirondack village where I grew up in their desire to live an hours'

travel distance from the capitol district, I hadn't realized that the situation

of deer in residential neighborhoods could be as ridiculous anywhere as it is in

Texas. Bambidom and opposition to guns havn't just gotten out of hand on some

strange kind of liberal island in Texas called Austin. The deer are

overpopulated and out of hand in Connecticut, and downstate New York, too.

Noone wants to shoot them, and they are grazing on peoples' front lawns!

OK, folks, if deer are on your front lawn, so are disease bearing kinds of ticks

that otherwise woudn't be on your front lawn. Ditto if your front lawn is in

the middle of fields and woodland. I myself can't generally imagine anything

crazier than a yuppie, and wouldn't consider living miles from nowhere, nor in a

little rural village like the one I grew up in, and I suspect my sister has

Stockholm syndrome!

Be that as it may, allowing deer on your front lawn is as stupid from a health

standpoint as letting mice and bats to nest in the house.

What is more, if deer are overpopulated, they are overcrowded, and disease that

a few deer would normally carry spreads further and faster, through more deer

than normal. Further, overpopulated deer often are ill fed or not eating

sufficiently high quality food, which makes them more vulnerable to disease,

which makes them more likely to carry the diseases that they carry that can be

spread to humans.

Honestly, I am reminded of early 19th century China, where it was considered

wrong to kill a fly, and the battle to get the population to respond to the fact

that they were spreading epidemic disease.

Deer aren't the only animals that can carry tick borne disease, nor that serve

as hosts to ticks; there are probably other animals in on it. Squirrels and

grackles have gotten a bit out of hand around here, too. My father didn't need

for it to be hunting season to shoot them!

Until twenty years ago, the idea of letting deer multiply to the point where

they roam on roads and graze in herds on peoples' front lawns in rural towns and

villages, would have been unthinkable. And extremely laughable. My father

would have quietly shot them and frozen the meat. Even in New York you could

shoot game on your own property, and my father also regularly shot small

animals, like bats, or squirrels who had come in the house, and could have

rabies, who were a threat to the health of the family. My father twice saved

our lives from human varmints, too. Like the time when we were out camping and

a bunch of roughnecks tried to push our trailer over.

Until twenty years ago, not only were deer food and not bambis, but standard

wisdom was that the best way to be kind to deer was to keep their population

down. Until 10th grade I was very into Bambi, but then I did a paper for

science class on whether to feed deer hay in the winter. I learned that

overpopulation is extremely cruel to deer and hunting is how we control the deer

population.