Re: Those Deer !

In a message dated 7/31/02 4:20:28 PM Eastern Daylight Time, lwallpe@juno.com
writes:

<< The damage to my garden has been extensive this year. They ate appx. 85%
of the daylily buds, probably 75% of the hosta, every Asiatic lily, a
blueberry bush and numerous other things. There is the Lyme disease problem in the East also. My county adjoins ( a
mile or two) Columbia County, NY, the county with the highest incidence of
Lyme disease in the entire country. I like to think that deer cannot get near
where we spend our time outdoors and that may make us safe. A great many
people in the garden groups around here have had and recovered from Lyme
disease, some twice. Every gardener here knows what to look for and gets
right to a doctor.

Claire Peplowski
NYS z4

Here in Wisconsin, we are facing an altogether different problem with the deer, Chronic Wasting Disease, which is to deer and elk as Mad Cow Disease is to cattle. It has been discovered in the western part of the state and now the Department of Natural Resources proposes to eradicate all deer in a several county area, which, if I remember correctly, is estimated to be about 25,000 animals. They have established several special hunting seasons this summer, but the kill has been relatively small so far, because of the difficulty of tracking the animals with the trees in full foliage.

The fall deer hunt has high commercial and economic value, particularly in the northern part of the state, and while there does not appear to be any evidence as yet that CWD is transmissible to humans, no one will go out on a limb and say that it can't. They are warning hunters not to eat brain or lymph tissues and they hope to have sufficient testing facilities set up so that individual kills can be tested.

It's a real Pandora's Box and no one really knows how it will play out.

--
Don Martinson
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
l*@wi.rr.com

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