Deer mice more dangerous than grizzlies?

[Ron Marshall]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...-deaths-rodent

[Robert Hall]

We've been dealing with Haunta in Utah for years.

Be smart, don't play with the wild life and store your food and trash properly.

[Vaughn]

Guns and cars are even more dangerous. Oh, and lightning, tornadoes, -- and people in general.

[photobymike]

Thats why i starve my cats ... so they will go after the mice and the rats ... and occasionally a salesman at the front door

[Drew Wiley]

Well, there goes their excuse that the first victim caught it someplace else ... Now Curry
Nat'l Park has four cases with two fatalities, at least according to local papers.

[tgtaylor]

Here's a link to a Photo Meetup that I led to New Idria, California 3 years back. I had first "discovered" New Idria by accident way back in the early 1990's while on a hiking trip to nearby (~40 or 50 miles) Pinnacles National Monument. Back then New Ideria was occupied by a drug treatment facility but the Kiln and original building was there along with polution from the mine which, as I came to understand it, the drug treatment school was contracted to clean it up. I scheduled the photo trip when I discovered on the local news that New Idria was down to its last occupant. Click on the photo's and you'll see the town as we found it 3 years ago. Note the "HANTA VIRUS" warning posted on the doors. We toured the abandoned building wearing surgical masks and I'm glad now that we did because there no doubt was Hanta Virus in those buildings.

http://www.meetup.com/SF-Bay-Area-Ph...ents/10655418/

Thomas

Here's a link to the one that I took the day before the ones in the link above:

http://www.meetup.com/SF-Bay-Area-Ph...40144/#9202357

[Scott Knowles]

Yes, Hantavirus is serious. The USGS, where I spent my career doing fieldwork in several western states, has protocols for dealing the mice in gage houses and shelters. While many other problems in the field are obvious, meaning size or sound, deer mice and Hantavirus isn't obvious until you find it, and all the more reason to be careful.

[Drew Wiley]

It's on the front pg of the SF Chronicle today, and was on primetime local TV news last nite. If their sources are correct, all known cases of Hanta in Calif were contracted indoors
due to heavy mouse infestation where it spreads between them rapidly. About a 30% death rate from known cases. I've never heard of anyone contracting it outdoors in the woods. Yosemite Valley is of course a city much of the year - lots of people, lots of potential mouse snack crumbs etc in those cabins, which are nonetheless "primitive" in terms of sanitation and rodent-proofing, very few natural predators around. So it's fairly
easy to understand why it would occur in a place like that.