Pandemic
The prairie dog died at the Kautzer home a few days later, but not
before he’d bitten Schyan’s finger. Schyan developed a fever of 103°F
(39°C), and fluid-filled bumps appeared on her skin. Kautzer took her
daughter to the doctor. Two days later, Schyan was admitted to the
hospital. Doctors eventually diagnosed Schyan with monkeypox, a
viral disease related to smallpox that had never been seen in the United
States before it sent Schyan to the hospital. Schyan’s parents—and
Chuckles, the other prairie dog—both got mild cases of monkeypox as
well. All recovered completely.
CDC disease detectives quickly traced the outbreak to a batch
of several hundred infected rodents shipped from Ghana to a pet
distributor in Texas. The distributor—who did not know the
animals were sick—sent the rodents to Illinois. There, a pet dealer
housed them with American prairie dogs, which are often sold as
pets, like the ones the Kautzers bought. With no natural immunity
to monkeypox, the prairie dogs quickly caught the disease from the
African rodents and became ill. When people purchased the prairie
dogs as pets, the animals and the people got sick too. By the end
of the outbreak, seventy-one people in six midwestern states had
developed monkeypox. All had contact with infected prairie dogs.
Several were hospitalized.
Two strains of monkeypox circulate in remote areas of central and
West Africa. The most dangerous strain kills up to 10 percent of those
infected. The milder strain is the one that reached the United States.
To prevent a widespread epidemic, US health officials quarantined
people and animals that had been exposed to the monkeypox. They
also gave the smallpox vaccination to vets, health-care workers, and
others at high risk of infection.
If someone had released just one infected prairie dog into the wild,
monkeypox could have spread to millions of American prairie dogs
and other wildlife such as mice, squirrels, and porcupines. The disease
could have decimated wildlife and spread to people. To prevent another
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