Althouse: A man who saved a mouse from a cat is now "at death's door" with the plague.

June 14, 2012

A man who saved a mouse from a cat is now "at death's door" with the plague.

In Oregon.

17 comments:

Toad Trend said...: Poor bastard.

Don't mess with an animals' dinner.; 6/14/12, 7:17 AM
Bob Ellison said...: I'm just commenting to change "1 comments" to "2 comments".; 6/14/12, 7:20 AM
Wince said...: Too many episodes of "Tom & Jerry".; 6/14/12, 8:03 AM
FleetUSA said...: No good deed goes unpunished.; 6/14/12, 8:23 AM
Known Unknown said...: Circle of life, bitches.; 6/14/12, 8:24 AM
Quaestor said...: I hate to say he earned his reward, but there, I said it.

So you say I'm heartless and cruel. My reply is nature is heartless and cruel. If you're going to elevate nature to some sort of deity, capitalize it to Nature and personify it into a mother then carry your compliant to Her and not to me.

What concerns me is which animal bit him, the cat or the mouse? Yersinia pestis effects rodents and is spread by the flea Xenopsylla cheopis. When the rodent dies the flea will jump to a new host if possible, such as a human, and thus spread the infection. Cats are usually considered plague-resistant, through countless generations of cats preying on mice and rats they've acquired a degree of immunity. But if the cat was the biter then this could be a troubling development.; 6/14/12, 8:32 AM
Shanna said...: "Taking a mouse out of a cat's mouth is probably not a good idea," Emilio DeBess, Oregon's public health veterinarian, told The Oregonian.

Seriously!; 6/14/12, 8:36 AM
Quaestor said...: No good deed goes unpunished

I fail to see in what sense this man's action was a good deed.; 6/14/12, 8:41 AM
Anonymous said...: I can only deduce it was very bad Karma, what a bitch.; 6/14/12, 9:22 AM
edutcher said...: Another one of those Oregonians who went to the state ZeroCare for help and got nothing but a pamphlet on assisted suicide.; 6/14/12, 9:40 AM
Petunia said...: I was walking my parents' cat the other day and noticed him stalking something. It was a snake trying to eat a toad. The snake took off when he saw me coming, so I picked up the toad in a plastic bag, and rinsed him off in a puddle in case the snake had left any venom on his skin (I didn't think we have venomous snakes here, but wasn't sure). Last I saw him he was sunning himself on a rock, and then he hopped away.

But I would NEVER attempt to remove prey from a predator's mouth, unless the prey was one of my pets, and maybe not even then. How stupid.; 6/14/12, 10:34 AM
chuck said...: I knew someone in NM who got the plague. In his case, tetracycline cleared it right up, but he wasn't a cooperative patient. I thought that a bit ungrateful, as otherwise he would have died.; 6/14/12, 10:36 AM
Anonymous said...: Q: "I fail to see in what sense this man's action was a good deed."

The good deed is to show plague is among us and will strike anytime.

The good deed is to provide an example of the Survival of the Fittest. A sick rat was not fit to survive, hence caught by a cat. Similarly, a man sicked with self righteous ignorance was pruned from the gene pool.

Btw, what happened to the rat? Was the poor cat sick too? If not, the poor innocent hard working cat who was turned a villain by an ignorant human for doing its job well might have been saved by said human. Hence, saving the cat from plague was the good deed for which the man had sacrificed himself.

Another good deed: provides an example of the Law of Unintended Consequences. He tried to save the rat from a predator, ended up saving the pradator. (Assuming the cat survived.); 6/14/12, 10:45 AM
Chip Ahoy said...: What happened to the flea?; 6/14/12, 11:09 AM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: He should have let nature take its course and let the cat eat the mouse.

Don't mess with Mother Nature!; 6/14/12, 11:28 AM
Joanne said...: My pecious male cat, when a late teen, slipped outside on a beautifuly, early spring morning which was so lovely we had opened windows and doors.

I was reading on the couch with my back to the ajar patio door, but a movement at the door end of the couch caught my eye. I looked over the edge of the couch to the floow and saw nature taking it's course.

Cladius, had caught a silver/brown dove and was eating it amid a head of soft featherey feathers. I was proud of Claudius for being a successfull feline hunter and didn't want to give him a strange message over this.

But, even with a large hole in its throat, it wasn't dead. I picked up the light, feathery little creature and it looked at me with those soft dove eyes.

I couldn't kill the dove and I couldn't give it back to Claudius, so I wrapped it in paper towels and took it to the vet for a merciful death. The Vet's office took it and said, no problem.

Claudius and I have not talked again about the dove, but we make loud noises when we let him slip out into the yard in nice weather, to alert the birds.; 6/14/12, 3:04 PM
NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...: He really saved the cat, you know.; 6/14/12, 7:44 PM