Ground Squirrels?

(checks article...)

Yep.

This is so very much not news.

Luckily this is Fark, because that is definitely not news.

I live in Colorado and frequently vacation in New Mexico, so I'm getting a kick...

/run away!

Attention all personnel. The black death is coming, the black death is coming! The great pestilence is finally upon us. Repent! Repent!!



/I'll bet your lymph nodes are as big as cats!

I've had worse.

DontMakeMeComeBackThere: There are different kinds of plague (Bubonic, Neumonic, etc). Bubonic is the king daddy of plagues, so it's taken to being called The plague.

We use the indefinite article "the" plague. Never "your" plague.

The All-Powerful Atheismo: Jiro Dreams Of McRibs: The bubonic plague is all over the American Southwest. It probably came to the US in 1866 from China to the West Coast.

And it's treatable, even the pneumonic variety

Not really. If it goes 24 hours before treatment, you're dead. Even for bubonic plague there's a 13% mortality rate with treatment. Yersinia pestis is a nasty critter.

CDC Fark Info Sheet - Yersina pestis, the Plague, the Black Death, Bubonic, Pneumonic Plague

What it is
A parasitic organism borne by the fleas of rats and other animals, unless of course it was all a mistake.

Symptoms
Swelling of the lymph nodes, causing the caracteristic lumps which gives the Bubonic plague its name; death; completely different symptoms. Some patients may claim not to be dead. They are in denial. Knock them over the head. It must be true that Germans have absolutely no sense of irony or humour.

Public security
The plague can be prevented by education, animal control and the building of massive expensive military bases to squash the wildlife and locals. Of course, the building of massive public works prorojects is impossible on Indian reservations, so stay away from brownish people with long dark greasy hair. An exception may be made for Alice Cooper, as it is well known that he eats rats for breakfast.



Epidemilogy
Endemic in many areas, the plague is borne by the fleas of rats, mice, cats, dogs, ground squirrels, moo-moos, moose, gnus, ducks, geese, trees ... and especially rabbits.

Treatment
It is now known that plagues are often preceded by earthquakes, which disturb the rat populations, and by famines, especially when rat populations explode during years when the bamboo flowers and bear fruit in India or China.

Since earthquakes are caused by homosexuality, Jews, unfaithfulness to God, heatheness, and anything that annoys Pat Robertson, such as zombie devil worship in Haiti, the medieval doctors weren't far off in in prescribing a good auto-da-fé burning the Jews, heretics, witches, wild women, cats, etc., in order to curry favour with God and other bullies of that ilk.

Antibiotics are also good if fire permits can not be obtained from the Fire Marshall.

Public Advisory
The public is advised to panic. Panic in the Streets (1950). B&W. A doctor and a policeman in New Orleans have only 48 hours to locate a killer infected with pneumonic plague. Director: Elia Kazan. Writers: Richard Murphy (screenplay), Daniel Fuchs (adaptation). This is the model for every subsequent plague movie, except for French adapatations of The Plague (La Peste) by Albert Camus.

The plague in Camus' La Peste is a metaphor for Naziism and collaboration during the war. The existentialist philosopher and writer, through his mouth piece, the hero of the story, tells us that you are either a victim (victime), a doctor (médicin) or an executioner (bourreau), and that even though there is no God or purpose to life, you should choose to be a doctor rather than a victim or an executioner.

Compare the themes of this novel with Ionesco's wartime play Rhinocéros. How bloody stupid where the Nazis not to realize that they were being mocked?

Crap. Made a mish-mash out of that. Whole paragraphs and sentences are out of place.

Fun activity: try to figure out which sentences and paragraphs have been mislaid and put them back in the right place. Did it make the post any funnier?

I was afraid of that.

PhoenixInFlames: Phage therapy isn't approved in the United states because it would require research - research no pharmacutical company wants to invest in because how do you patent a virus?

For the record, the bacteriophage for lysteria has already been patented and is currently in use in the United States

Dude, if you're going to say that nobody would ever do something, you can't end your comment by saying that someone is doing it.

Ah, the yearly plague-bearing squirrel found in a Bay Area park story. God, I miss living in California. And this time of year, I miss their crazy-ass ballot initiatives. Someone should totally have jumped on "The Horsemeat Initiative" as a band name while it was still fresh, but that was years ago now.