WOW Toni, I didn't know the WNV was such a big problem in the South. We heard about it in the news, but the numbers in our region were small so it seemed like hipe. Interesting info.
Sidebar story: When we lived in town, we found a dead blue jay in our driveway. Didn't think much about it. Then a day or two later we found another. Since the West Nile virus was in our area, we decided to call Texas Parks and Wildlife to report it and find where to take the carcass for testing. When my husband called, the lady on the phone asked, "How dead is the bird?" Well, we never before knew there were degrees of dead! He replied, "All the fly is gone out of this bird!"
Sounds like the beginning of a Monty Python sketch. He's pinin' for the fjords. He is bereft of live...oh no, my brain is warped for sure if I can remember most of that dialog
i understand the idea of the media 'hype' frank aand jewell, but, are the numbers of deaths here the same as those during 'common' events? the numbers seem unusually high to me. and, looking to scientists for explanations, they are short of them.
Contrary to the PR firm representing Scientists, if there is one, Scientists really don't know everything there is to know about their chosen fields. In at least two of those newspaper articles either the Veterinarian or the reporter stated that animal die-offs like those are common. There is no normal number of deaths in one of the die-off events. The numbers would depend on the size of the flock involved. And on the number of birds that were eaten by predators before the bodies were found by humans. The die-offs of sea creatures happen too, water temperature changes caused a minor directional change in the Gulf Stream or an exceptionally cold storm over a part of the ocean. Fish die-offs could be caused by an ocean liner or other large ship emptying their waste water tanks (yes that is illegal but it does happen) in the ocean. Again the numbers would depend on how many were found before predators ate some.
