Ep. 835: Attack Of The Screw Worms

00:00:08
Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underware. Listening toast, you can’t predict anything brought to you by first Light. When I’m hunting, I need gear that won’t quit. First Light builds, no compromise, gear that keeps me in the field longer, no shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out at first light dot com. That’s f I R S T L I T E dot com. Join today by Caleb Hubbard, the veterinarian entomologist of the Hubbard Entomology Lab at New Mexico State University. We’re here to talk about the screwroom Can we call it an epidemic pandemic? How it’s gonna kill everybody? No, No, I don’t.

00:00:56
Speaker 2: I don’t think.

00:00:57
Speaker 1: I like make it seem good, like make it seem vital.

00:01:00
Speaker 3: Well, I think one of the things is that I’m trying not to cause panic. They think that that’s kind of the biggest thing, But it is a kind of a big problem. So the screwroom fly is this parasitic fly that feeds on living flesh. The US had done a really good job of pushing it out of the United States, out of Mexico down to Panama. We’ve kind of been holding it there for the last twenty or so years, but since twenty twenty three we’ve essentially had cases of it that have been occurring. There’s been fifteen thousand or so cases in Mexico, and as of November of this year, there was a case sixty miles from the US border. So it’s a it’s come in to a cow near you, correct, Yeah, And if you look on the USDA’s APHIS website, they say it’s not a concern of getting into the US, but we do have cases that are close and so it’s something that getting the information out there is kind of the biggest thing about it.

00:01:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, what I’ve read about in the news, they make it seem like, you know, when we reached out wanting to get someone about screw worms. Reading about in the news, it’s like moving at an alarming rate. Yeah, come to a cown near you.

00:02:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, very much so, or a cow or any wildlife or humans or Fido, your dog. So uh, it’ll pretty much feed on on any vertebrate, they say, even birds, But for the most part, it’s gonna be your you know, your larger animals. Uh, your companion, animals, things like that.

00:02:24
Speaker 1: But but yeah, okay, we’re gonna dig in on that that this is, this is, this is good in a veterinarian. That’s just so folks knowing entomology explain what an entomologist is.

00:02:33
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So an entomologist is someone that that studies insects or bugs in different ways. Yeah, My backgrounds veterinary entomology, So that means that I work with really all the all the pests that cause disease or you know, are are problematic in animal and animals. Traditionally we’re working with you know, livestock, so cattle, pultry, things like that. But I’m actually a at New Mexico’s I’m hired as an urban entomologist. So that’s all the creepy crawleys that kind of bother you in around your home. So if that’s bedbugs, cockroaches, scorpions, anything like that. But I justify also that something like screwworm or or my background is in flies. You know, no one likes flies in their house and so it’s kind of like, you know, any of that interaction with humans, and so that’s where you know, I come in with all this kind of screw worm stuff.

00:03:25
Speaker 1: But you got you got just thrown hardcore into the screworm situation.

00:03:28
Speaker 3: Though I would say that I got thrown into it, but I think I I initially volunteered and then was kind of volunteered to kind of it is and and it’s kind of one of those things of making myself kind of available to do whatever. You know, I’m new to New Mexico. I just moved to New Mexico in August, and I don’t know, I’m really enjoying the state overall. But I don’t know where I heard this, or maybe I just came up with it. You know, New Mexico’s number one at being last at everything if it kind of kind of comes to education, it comes to you know, a lot of things like that.

00:04:03
Speaker 1: He’s not ingratiating himself.

00:04:04
Speaker 3: No, So, but here’s my thing is that my goal here is to make New Mexico not that when it comes to screwer, is that we should be prepared, that we should be able to be uh, you know, be able to get this information out there, especially to you know a group of people that aren’t being reached out to hunters and outdoors men in general, and so My goal with communicating all of this is to situate New Mexico and in a place that we can be prepared because we don’t have the finances like Texas does. We don’t have kind of the resources that our neighbors do. And so it’s you know, getting all of this information out there because you know, I’m only one person, and so New Mexico obviously is a huge state, and we have a lot of economic activity when it comes to hunting and outdoors, and so it’s reaching out to all of those people and kind of I can’t do it alone, and so that’s kind of my my goal here is to make New Mexico uh into a state that we can made an example for everybody else.

00:05:05
Speaker 1: All Right, so we’re gonna dig into heavy on screw worms, but first we got to talk about a couple things this. So first, Doug, give me your hand, pill zoom in on this right.

00:05:16
Speaker 2: I lost you’re asking.

00:05:24
Speaker 1: I was at I was at the Sheep Show, okay, Wild Sheep Foundation Convention, Deal trade show, and I’m doing this little things, signing books, taking pictures and whatnot. And these dudes come up and I’d seen him around because they’re all dressed up like gunfighters.

00:05:42
Speaker 2: Spurs, and you notice that kind of thing, all.

00:05:45
Speaker 1: Dressed up like wild West gun first with this gals carrying a stuffed raccoon around costumes. Pretty soon I take note that they’re in line to come up and chat. This gentleman explains what they do is they’re the people that put on at a ghost town. See, they have their own Virginia City down there. Like we have a Virginia City, we have a ghost town. They have one too, So he says Virginia City and I’m thinking ours, but he means theirs. Explains that they’re the people that do the gun They put on like the gunfight, the wild West gunfight, and they happen to show up in their reactors, reenactors, reenactors. So he hands me this, gives me his business card, and I lose it. So this I think, I think that he invented this. If you want, I lost his damn business card. But he’s a gunfighter in Virginia City, Nevada, and he runs around at in Reno and he dresses up like a gunfighter. I think that people can prove me wrong. I think he invented this. I’m holding the weasel here. Hold out your arm.

00:07:00
Speaker 4: Now, dog, it’s a slapak.

00:07:05
Speaker 1: Do it again. Here’s a pine squirrel.

00:07:08
Speaker 2: The other arm was good.

00:07:13
Speaker 1: Now, I think he.

00:07:15
Speaker 4: Invented that we need to have it sound here just for the for the audio audience. Put it near the mic.

00:07:21
Speaker 1: If he invented that, he deserves a Nobel prize and talks army.

00:07:25
Speaker 4: Dude.

00:07:27
Speaker 1: My daughter is going to lose her mind when she sees that.

00:07:29
Speaker 2: I wondered why I was here. Now, I know, what do you think of that? I don’t know. I think it looks good on me.

00:07:35
Speaker 1: These are slap These are tube skinned. We got a tube skinned ermine, a tube skinned pine squirrel converted into slap bracelets. I think I met the inventor. But you can never trust a reenactor. Do you know what I’m saying? When was the last time? Tell me when was the last time a ren actor? Because because it’s they, they inherently are living a lot.

00:08:06
Speaker 2: I know a couple of those guys.

00:08:07
Speaker 1: You can’t trust for me, you an actor?

00:08:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don’t know. I trust my job guys.

00:08:12
Speaker 1: I’m joking mostly, Okay, dougs here, So I did that. Oh, a couple of announcements to make in three days. Okay, I’m gonna be at I was just talking about being at the Wild Sheep Show, The Sheep Show, Wild Cheap Foundation Show. If you on YouTube watched are or wherever you watch stuff are Tanzania Hunts. The guy I was hunting in Tanzania with is Morgan Potter. He’s the professional hunter I was with. Great guy, very funny, very smart, great guy. He and I are doing a talk at Safari Club International in in Nashville, Tennessee. So Safari Club International has like a convention I don’t know they call yeah, I think they call it a convention. The SCI Show. Morgan and I are going to do a talk about our experiences kind of like from the perspective of someone that doesn’t know anything, like an idiot like me, an Africa idiot and an Africa expert, and we’re going to give a lecture at Safari Club on February nineteenth. We’re not all the money, so you gotta get a ticket, but all the money goes to SCI. So what you gotta do is you gotta go on SCI’s website and you got to get like you become a member and that allows you to go to the show and then you’ll see you can get a ticket to come to our talk again doesn’t go to Meeta Morgan. All the money goes to sci It’s a nonprofit hunting rights some conservation work organization. Check that out. So also more news. Mediator podcast is going to two times weekly starting March ninth, somewhat crimswording, somewhat replacing Radio Live. We’re gonna have you going to the interview show, which is like right now we’re fixing to talk to this veterinarian entomology just well, you know how I want you to turn me onto. Do you have any colleagues who are forensic entomologists to study like how to tell how long a guy’s body’s been laying there? Yeah?

00:10:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, it’s an interesting field. There’s only a couple of people that do forensic entomology. We did some forensic entomology, uh where I did my PhD. My PhD advisor developed a class and kind of did some of that. But there’s really only you know, five or six people that kind of do it as a career. There’s one guy at Texas A and M Jeff Tomberlin who kind of is one of the forensic entomology people. He’s actually doing some stuff with poaching in Africa and yeah, yeah, and so I am yeah, actually I have a call with him tomorrow, can you yeah, yeah, wheels a little bit for me, absolutely right.

00:10:47
Speaker 1: Uh, you don’t know any neanderthal experts to you.

00:10:50
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, Now.

00:10:53
Speaker 1: What was I getting at? Oh, we’re splitting the show. So we’re gonna have the regular interview show like we have now that we’re gonna have a news show. So we’re having a news and commentary show which will come out every week very close to it being recorded. Okay, in the news and commentary show will allow us to we’re going to be doing it’s the same crew from Radio Live, but we’re going to be much of the same individuals from Radio Live, but it’s not beholden to a certain place in time, and it’s going to be new current events dominated by current events. So you’ll be able to get up to date news and commentary at the news show. So two drops per week. The energy that goes into Radio Live will transfer over to the news and commentary show that all starts March ninth. We’re also fixing up a brand new studio, so you’ll see that there’s like a new studio area too. In connection to all this, got a correction really quick, srst, before you get into this. Can we get cell phones out the table? We’re getting a little bit of fuzz.

00:11:52
Speaker 2: Oh sorry, thank you.

00:11:53
Speaker 1: Now you’re getting I should have warned you before. Oh where’s the correction that I said? It was kind of dumb because it wasn’t a good correction. Oh here, let me find where’d that go?

00:12:01
Speaker 4: Let me find that. I didn’t put that in?

00:12:04
Speaker 1: Why not? I said, I want to talk about it, but it’s done forgot to do that.

00:12:10
Speaker 2: Uh something about the wolf.

00:12:12
Speaker 1: No, here’s a cruestion. It was Colorado Wolf Recovery Goals episode eight twenty. Correction. Okay, right for this. He even tells me that I can feel free to fact check this, and it’s it’s like a it’s like a sword of corraction. He says. At the end of the episode, you guys were discussing Colorado’s wolf reintroduction episode the end of episode eight twenty, and Steve mentioned that c p w’s Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s goal for wolves is thirty to fifty. He says this is only partially true. Okay, but he’s right. This is a This is a correction. The reintroduction goal in Colorado to re is the reintroduction goal is to put to reintroduce thirty to fifty, not to establish a population of thirty to fifty. The goal is to cut thirty to fifty loose. Okay, that’s not the stated recovery goal. He goes on, This is me quoting him. In fact, there is no official number for a desired population in the finalized plan for a recovery goal. However, there are only guidelines for down listing from the state endangered species list. Okay, if they have at least fifty wolves for four years, they can down list to state threatened status. If they maintain a population of at least one hundred and fifty wolves for two years, they will dlist from this state endangered species list. He goes on to say, I was saying that, and I stand by this. I was saying in Colorado, unless sixty percent of the people in Colorado move away and those are replaced by Utahns and the Vadins or something, those are replaced by a different, a different strain of human, you will never see a hunting season for wolves in Colorado. I stand by that. I gave that as a piece of opinion. He says, though, once the wolf is delisted in Colorado, so that once they hit that one hundred and fifty wolves for two years, he says, there is supposed to be and I’m quoting here, consideration for making wolves a game species. But he goes on to say, and this is a wildlife professional. I don’t want to give his name. This is a state wildlife professional. The road descent. I’m not gonna. I’m not gonna. I’m not gonna. What do you call that nowadays?

00:15:07
Speaker 2: Dox them? Dox them?

00:15:09
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I dox his brother, he says. But if we’ve learned anything from wolf policy in the past, there will be much litigation and hogwash to prevent management of wolves by hunting. So even though the stated number is a bit higher than Steve said, and there is in fact a provision in the plan to consider reclassification to a game species, it does seem likely that the wolf population will continue to increase significantly with no clear final goal having been set. Here’s a correction from Florida. That that is that is that that that’s a great that’s the kind of see. Pretty soon we’re gonna start a correction of the Week contest.

00:15:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like that one.

00:15:59
Speaker 1: That guy could have. He was a winner. He was a winner.

00:16:03
Speaker 4: It was all my bad because I put it in the notes kind of not not clearly. What did me when I put the thirty to fifty goal? I put it under like, yeah, I’d put it on board. No, well, I’m that’s that’s that’s part of it. But the guy’s right, so it’s it’s that’s good. He I mean, there are probably people in the audience saying no, no, no, no, it’s and they’re right. You guys are all right.

00:16:32
Speaker 1: Where was I Florida? Okay, here’s a correction that would not win. Oh, we need to get we need like a new Do we have our own email address for the podcast?

00:16:47
Speaker 4: What is it called the meat Eater podcast at the meadeater dot com.

00:16:51
Speaker 1: Where do those go?

00:16:52
Speaker 4: Uh? They all filter mainly to our community manager.

00:16:56
Speaker 1: But do we get all of those? We get all of them? Okay?

00:17:00
Speaker 4: Oh no, I asked him to filter stuff.

00:17:03
Speaker 1: Well don’t I don’t know that he knows what I think is interesting? Do you know what I’m saying? Like what is the risk? Like the risk would be because my wife doesn’t think what I think is interesting is interesting? What’s that?

00:17:16
Speaker 4: I’ve asked him to cast a wide knit and see and for me a bunch of different, funky, weird things. I think. I think. I think he knows.

00:17:24
Speaker 1: Because out of every ten things that I think is interesting, I tell my wife, she finds nine not interesting. You can’t trust not equating him to my wife. I’m just saying, like you know, no two people are the same.

00:17:36
Speaker 4: That’s true.

00:17:37
Speaker 1: Here’s a not winner. This guy, in fact, with the opposite of win correction of the week.

00:17:46
Speaker 2: You’re going to correct his correction.

00:17:47
Speaker 1: I am he His correction is titled misrepresenting opposition to the Florida bear hunt. I enjoy, He goes on, I enjoy your show. Compliment Sandwich, I enjoy your show, but feel the need to offer you a new perspective on a story you recently reported on. As a resident of rural Florida, I’m surrounded by the controversy surrounding our state’s recent black bear hunt. While you presented thoughtful views on the battle between those who support and depose bear hunting in Florida, I feel you overlooked an important concept in the argument. He goes on, Though I don’t bear hunt I’m a lifelong hunter and angler. In addition, my professional training is in fish and wildlife management, and my previous career had me frequently collaborating with wildlife managers nationwide. In addition, I currently work at an environmentally focused nonprofit. So I rub elbow with a diverse group of outdoor minded individuals, he could win a composition.

00:19:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, this sounds like Midwest passive aggressive to me.

00:19:10
Speaker 1: Well, if he was going toe to toe with most of the people that write us a letter, he would win a composition award, not the hack like I like. I prefer like when it looks like ee. Cummings wrote in yeah you know, while you report, did I say that already? Oh okay? He goes on, while your reporting included key details behind the quote animal rights folks opposing the bear hunt, It left out a glaring reason why so many Floridians oppose it. In general, the hunt is being broadcast as an example of animal populations outgrowing their habitat, when in most case it’s actually a case of habitat being reduced around the animals. He goes on, see Doug Dougs, Doug does nowhere It’s gonna fall.

00:20:13
Speaker 2: I read it but now I’ve forgotten everything.

00:20:16
Speaker 1: He doesn’t know if he’s going to agree with him or not. Well, that’s just gonna pit me against Doug. He goes on about this. Outsiders have certainly heard of the development happening all across central Florida. But believe me, unless you have lived it, you have no way to comprehend the complete eradication of fish and wildlife habitat occurring daily throughout this state. He goes on, Florida’s development friendly building codes allow for thousands of acres to be cleared and developed at an incredible pace. Make no mistake, this is no way environmentally sensible development. This is clear cut, corner to corner, bulldozed and compacted development seemingly everywhere. When developers clear land in Florida, no wildlife is left nothing, not a bug, a bird, and certainly not a bear. I don’t agree. I don’t disagree with any of this. He hasn’t gotten to the park.

00:21:17
Speaker 2: I’m waiting.

00:21:20
Speaker 1: He hasn’t gotten to the correction yet. He’s just laying the groundwork. Here’s the clincher. Here’s where he brings a home. Bear habitat is being removed at an unheard of pace his words here. That’s the majority of what’s behind opposition to the hunt. Floridians, hunters and anglers alike, view wildlife policy in this state as a failure due to continued declining habitat, the likes of which have never been seen in the South. Many hunters I know oppose the bear hunt for this very reason. It’s viewed as a cop out by the fish and wildlife managers and an excuse for declining habitat. It’s important this opposition to the hunt is represented correctly because many of them are hunters themselves. Here’s why. Here’s where you’re no. No, if you still hunt deer, and you still hunt turkeys, and you still fish, you’re what you’re saying isn’t true. They’re losing habitat too. So are you quitting all hunting out of protests for the state not getting a grip on development? How are you? How are you saying? Oh, no, I oppose having a bear season, but I support having a deer season. I support having turkey season. Come on, you, just no, It’s just totally not true unless this guy writes in. If he writes in and says to me, oh no, here’s a crack to your correction, to my correction, and it’s that I have quit all hunting, I boycott any kind of hunting and fishing in Florida out of a protest to rampant development in Florida. Then I’ll say, Okay, I believe you, but there’s no way that’s true. You’re not. It’s like you’re not willing intellectually, you’re sort of holding out that a bear is somehow different than a state managed game animal because of your perceptions.

00:23:29
Speaker 5: He’s there. The animals are dealing with loss of habitat. You have well, right, and so you have more animals competing or on less habitat. Consequently, you have overpopulation.

00:23:45
Speaker 1: You know why. He’s also wrong. He’s also wrong because the the the total number of bears. If what he was saying was true, you would be I mean, it is true, I’m not the development Like, Yeah, development in Florida is out of control from an environmental conservation standpoint, it’s in rough shape. The state is in rough shape, developments out of control. But that is not what the bears like. Right now, that is not what the bears are like. Bear numbers in Florida are growing. Bear numbers in Florida are yeah, bear numbers In Florida bear numbers are black bear numbers. In general, around the country, bears are moving into new places regionally, like they’re moving in new places locally, and they’re moving into new places more broadly.

00:24:38
Speaker 2: So they’re pretty adaptive.

00:24:39
Speaker 1: It’s taking them one hundred and fifty years to figure out how to deal with people, but they’re figuring it out. And like he’s just mixing up two things another one. This is a little more science. You might like this one. We’ll get to the whole screw room thing. Don’t worry dude. Alan Lazara, who’s come on before. He’s an er doctor. He’s an er doctor and he’s been on the show. He has a particular focus and done a lot of work in tree stand injuries. Very interesting guy. He wrote in there’s this new treatment coming out for frost bitten hands and feet. The reason I’m bringing this up because people that like to cook wild game, I mean cooks in general, but a lot of my buddies who are avid wild game cooks use soouved machines souvid wands to hold water at a very specific temperature. Right, Like, if you’re trying to hold. If I told you, hey, put water on your stove and hold a pot of water on your stove at one hundred and thirty nine degrees for three days, You’re not gonna do that. If you put a SOUVD apparatus in a pot of water and you set it at thirty nine degrees for three days, that son of a bitch is gonna be thirty nine degrees for three days. One hundred and thirty nine degrees for three days. There’s some new stuff, and it just was published in the Academy the Academic Emergency Medicine Journal about seemingly having great luck rewarming frozen body parts and SOUV baths because you can get the perfect temperature and hold it and hold it. Because anyone that’s ever frozen your fingers you stick them in hot water. That is not the way to go painful. So he’s pointing out like he’s not Doctor Dozara is not suggested a disclaimer, but okay, this is from his This is from the journal. Rewarming frost bitten tissue with skinn to skin, top contact or warm water. Okay. Treatment includes removing the person from the cold environment and rewarming frost bitten tissue with skinned to skin contact or warm water immersion. Okay, rubbing no good. Typically in the emergency department or field, this is accomplished with a warm water bath that is frequently exchanged to target a warm to target a water temperature.

00:27:22
Speaker 5: Some bitch, you put it in sad because you have to exchange because it’s you’re not holding the temperature.

00:27:26
Speaker 1: No, no, check this out. You’re trying. They’ll, they’ll, they’re, they’re, they’re, they’re trying to get water at ninety eight six. I didn’t know this.

00:27:38
Speaker 2: Makes sense.

00:27:38
Speaker 1: So you freeze your hand, you freeze your fingers. The medical treatment would be to try to get water at ninety eight six. Stick your hand in there. And then he says, they’re constantly swapping it out with new water. But there’s a dry heat. No good. Like holding it to a fire not advisable, Rubbing it not advisable. Skinned the skin contact or a water bath at ninety eight six, He says, typically in an emergency room setting, you’re swapping out the water, swapping out the water, swapping out the water. Uh here, set your sue v’d at ninety eight six. Just in the winter, turn it on, put it in the ground. Yeah, every time you freeze your fingers come in, dunk them in there.

00:28:23
Speaker 2: It sounds like a big whirlpool to me. Yeah. Yeah.

00:28:26
Speaker 3: It kind of reminds me of Star Wars Luke Skywalker, you know, he was on Hoff and they.

00:28:31
Speaker 1: Stopped him wicked back to tank.

00:28:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, there you go. And it seems like, you know, they’re just taking it from Star Wars. I’m sure these scientists were.

00:28:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were. They were hot on the seux vied for anybody else was yeah, here’s a quick comment, and then then we’re all then we’re all in on screwworms. Speaking of doctor Lazarre, a guy just wrote in that he was listening way back into the into the deep cuts. He was back in the episode one with doctor Alan Lazara, and episode one is called Bleeding Out with Doctor Allen Lazara. In it, we had a discussion about blue gills biting men’s nipples. I remember this, This guy rode in from Michigan. He actually calls them blue gails.

00:29:21
Speaker 2: I wondered if that was a spelling error when I was reading the notes.

00:29:25
Speaker 1: And Brody said, do people in Michigan call him blue Gails? And I’m like, I think they kind of a little bit do. But you’d also call him a gill. But there is a little bit of a blue gail. No blue gills, No, I can’t think of that. I get what he’s getting at, but I think it’s a pretty clean blue gill. Yep, bluegill, or you’d say gills. This guy has this to say. He says, almost every man that swam and my grandpa’s pond has had this happen to him. Me included. Is this a correction, No, it’s like an observation. Ye, he’s a fabricous. He’s a fabricator. It’s a note. I’ll critique it in the minute, but first I’ll take you the notice. He says the pond was stocked only with bluegills, which were fed little fish pellets by my grandparents. We attributed the nipple biting to the similar appearance of these pellets to hard nipples and cold water. We believe the fish would mistake the nipple for a pellet and bite us. We would almost always come out of the water looking like a marathon runner who forgot to put tape on their nipples. This pond brings it even tighter to home. This pund happens to be just thirty minutes south of ann Arbor, where doctor Lazara was working. Lest you question the relevance, I don’t know. I don’t think that’s it. I think I agree that that’s your assumption. But plenty of nipples have been bitten, and plenty of ponds that aren’t fed wild these are wildfish biting nipples.

00:31:15
Speaker 5: Body hair seems to attract them. Two, I’ve been bit like on different parts of my body in those kinds of ponds.

00:31:24
Speaker 1: With you’ve been skinny dipping and had your packer bit No you.

00:31:28
Speaker 4: Neither, Yeah, lucky you guys.

00:31:32
Speaker 1: All right, Okay, back to screwworms.

00:31:38
Speaker 2: It always comes around, always does.

00:31:40
Speaker 1: How long as screams are screams are progressing north through as you explained, how long has there like, what is the sort of what is the early understanding of screw worms? And how long have humans been talking about screw worms? And where have they been talking about screworm.

00:32:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it’s called primary screw worm or New World screworm because it’s a problem of the Americas. And so the first kind of like true documented case was actually in French Guyana in a penal colony. So in eighteen fifty eight, the French kind of noted, oh, hey, yeah, we have these prisoners that are being eaten alive by something. Yeah, humans, we have no idea what it is, and so they send in this guy Cockrell, who ended up like realizing that they were fly maggots and kind of described it there, and then it kind of went dormant for I guess whatever that math would be sixty or seventy years. And so then it was the nineteen thirties in the US that we started documenting these cases where we were seeing cattle that were being infested, and so pretty much since about the thirties is kind of like when it’s been on our radar of being this big problem. And then from the thirties to about the early nineteen seventies was kind of the heyday of control. They developed this thing called steril insect technique to get rid of the flies, and then since the seventies, at least in the US, we pushed it out and then kind of have had to work with different different governments. So we worked with the Mexican government to kind of build a facility to release sterile flies to push it out of Mexico. And then it was two thousand and one or two thousand and two that we worked with the Panamanian government to essentially our one sterile fly production facility is down in Panama and all of the flies are essentially going there to be released to kind of control it from moving northward essentially.

00:33:46
Speaker 1: And so normal magot people associate magots with eating undead.

00:33:52
Speaker 3: Stuff, correct, Yeah.

00:33:54
Speaker 1: But this is a magot, little living Yeah, but why won’t Why does a normal magot? I’m sure there’s many kinds. Yeah, yeah, no, I heard disco rice. Why does a normal magot want? Why does he want dead stuff? Yeah?

00:34:19
Speaker 3: So this is this is one thing that I tell my students or anybody why questions are hard, right, because it goes down to there’s a why, and I can tell you, you know, I don’t necessarily know if we completely know why one maggot is going to be specialized for dead tissue. And and a lot of it does have to do with you know, if you’re thinking about a normal maggot, that you would see they’re not actually feeding on the tissue. They’re feeding on the bacteria, and they’re feeding on kind of all the gross decomposing material that’s there, and so that’s what they’re actually using. So like I did my PhD working on house flies and we’re going to kind of create this what we called larval media. It is essentially how we made new house flies. And really it’s just a combination of you know, like brand and alfalfa and yeast and kind of it smells good until you put flies in it. But all we’re doing is creating a bacteria and yet soup essentially so that the maggots can feed on that and so that I don’t know if we actually know like what exactly it is, but.

00:35:17
Speaker 1: So they’re after whatever else is going on, like like what I keep calling a normal man. Yeah, they’re after whatever’s going on from the decomposition process, not necessarily digesting rotten protein.

00:35:33
Speaker 3: Correct, Yeah, yeah, and they’re doing they’re doing a combination of of all of that. But yeah, that what differentiates them is is kind of it really has to do just with that ones feeding on living tissue.

00:35:46
Speaker 4: You know.

00:35:46
Speaker 3: It’s it’s a fascinating thing that there’s actually a therapy it’s called medical maggot therapy that they and there’s a there’s a guy Ron Sherman, who was the first person to get maggots. F FDA proved to put them into wounds to actually clean out wounds. So you developed these mats, So that’s a it’s Lucilius aricotta. It’s just like a common green blowfly that you would see. And they found that again they’re not feeding on living tissue. And there’s been some different studies that have shown that the maggots are just as good as a doctor, right, or better at cleaning up the edges of decomposing wounds.

00:36:23
Speaker 1: Doesn’t say much for you guys.

00:36:25
Speaker 5: It’s just as good as a doctor. Well, you know, it’s like lyrics coming out of this guy over here.

00:36:30
Speaker 3: Well, you know it’s one of those things like I at least I’m a PhD and on MD, so I’m just throwing shade at them.

00:36:35
Speaker 1: So it’s okay, I gotcha. Uh, just I don’t want to stay too long on the normal kind of magots. But the more commonly available maggots, Yeah, in your local ditch, but in your local summertime ditch is you know, you know the peculiar like as much of the stench you just said, like you could make a maggot medium. What was in the magot medium? You make.

00:36:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, So for for house flies, which isn’t going to be blowflies, that’s a whole other thing, and we can talk about that. The house fly stuff is brand alfalfa yeast and dried milk. It smells okay, yeah, it smells like you’re bacon until you put flies in it, and then.

00:37:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, why do they? Why do why do the Like when you look at a rotten thing laying there in your mind, it’s like, what you’re smelling is the rot, yeah, right, But you put maggots on it, it creates its own stint.

00:37:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I’ll be honest, I don’t know if you’re traditional or run of the mill blowfly maggots are producing this like terrible odor. That is one thing though about primary screworm that there is a specific odor that comes off of the larvae that attracts more flies to that wound so that they will lay more eggs. But I can’t actually speak to what is what exactly that is. I think some of it, you know, if you’re thinking about it, is they’re churning up all of those like volatile things, right, So if.

00:38:07
Speaker 1: You have some of your case, the thing that smells it baking until you put the maggots on it, So what are they doing that’s making it stink?

00:38:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, so some of that just has to do with the latter process that we’re dealing with it. And so pretty much the entire time that the maggots are in their their little container, they’re fine. What we do is we take advantage of their biology. So when they’re getting ready to pupate or kind of form that chrysalis like a butterfly wood, they look for a dark, dry place to kind of hide out. And so what we do is we say, hey, like the cracks and johnis is old dog out exactly? Yeah, yeah is we say, hey, we want to take advantage of this. So we dump water on them and we say and we essentially force them out of their container into a secondary container that then we can just collect them all up and essentially cleanly pick them up. So really what the odor is is a combination of the maggots. Now we have rotting material that had maggots in it, some of the maggots have died and started decomposing. I’ve until that point you end up not having a super terrible loader. I will also say though, that like I’m pretty nose blind at this point. I’ve been working with flies for over a decade, and anytime that I’ve had people come in, they’re like, oh no, this is terrible. And I’m like, there’s very particular smells that I’m bothered by, but fly maggots is not necessarily one of them.

00:39:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I could probably go toe to toe with you. Noah’s blindness weird texting yesterday. There’s this machine we’re going to talk about, the nasal Raider. You ever hear of this now? Is that what it’s called? Yeah, there’s a way. There’s a machine. I’m not kidding you. We’re gonna have We’re gonna talk all about it coming up. If you get let’s say you’re a municipal nasal ranger. Let’s say you get a stench complaint. This this is the craziest thing. There’s a thing called the nasal Range. You can go buy it. Someone calls and says, man, my neighbors whatever they got going on, right, Yeah, stinks, hog farming, beetleworks, cleaning skulls, whatever you gotta complain, sewage. But it’s sort of like it’s it’s like a little bit subjective. Yeah, Like I could go over there and be like, I don’t see what the problem is. My wife would go over there and be like, good lord, that’s a problem, right. So the nasal ranger you it’s a machine you put over your nose and there’s a little meter that meters that you’re breathing fairly.

00:40:34
Speaker 2: Okay.

00:40:36
Speaker 1: You can’t breathe too little, you can’t breathe too much. So it’s like you gotta breathe sucking on that sucker in a way that is like holding the needle on the right spot, so you’re breathing like a normal person.

00:40:48
Speaker 3: It’s the opposite of a breath lizer, and it’s yeah.

00:40:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, breath lizer. Yeah. Breath lizers like blow blow, and you’re like.

00:40:56
Speaker 5: Body, okay, guy, like a guy who’s experienced that.

00:41:00
Speaker 1: This is so old. I could tell it without hope I’ll get him in trouble. I’m not gonna say who it is. Did already say who it is?

00:41:06
Speaker 2: No, I have a buddy, buddy.

00:41:08
Speaker 1: I have a buddy who claimed in the old days, long ago, he had claimed to developed a breathalyzer evading breath technique. He felt that he was able to channel secretly channel fresh air up through his nose feed the breathalyzer without drawing into his inner self, Do you follow me?

00:41:37
Speaker 2: Went to some dead shows.

00:41:40
Speaker 1: Without letting the air come in and find out what all is going on inside of him?

00:41:46
Speaker 4: Did he have like a separate diaphragm and lung cavity?

00:41:50
Speaker 1: He was a breathing technique that they’re gonna name the guy.

00:41:56
Speaker 2: Why would that get him in trouble?

00:41:58
Speaker 1: No, if he was saying, if he were to get breathalyzed by a law enforcement officer, he was saying, can’t catch me because I have a way. I have a way that they don’t know I’m doing it. But I’m funneling in gusts of fresh air and in my nose straight out my mouth. It’s like players that do the circular breathing, you know, circular breathing, the nasal ranger. It then puts a number to the stench. Okay, how does it do that? I haven’t finished the video yet.

00:42:32
Speaker 5: Okay, based on your breathing, based on your particular breathing.

00:42:36
Speaker 1: It’s like there’s a woman that there’s a whole video where she’s demonstrating how it works. You go to the stinky area, she says, you can go stand I’m staying five feet from the hog farm because the neighbor’s fence goes up to the hog farm. So I can stand in the neighbor. I can stay in the yard. Put my nasal ranger on, and the meter makes sure you’re breathing at a normal like what would be the normal person’s breathing. Meaning you can’t go because that’s not normal, right, and you can’t go like this for you people just listening, I’m plugging my noise, yeah, because that’s not normal. So the nasal ranger makes you do a normal breath.

00:43:20
Speaker 2: It seems like it’s a little superhero or something.

00:43:23
Speaker 3: Nasal ranger.

00:43:25
Speaker 1: You do a normal breath and it’s got these carbon filters on it and whatnot, and it spits out a stench. Rank. Yeah. Interesting, it’s fascinating.

00:43:37
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:43:37
Speaker 3: Well, you know, you were talking about forensic entomology before, and you know, traditionally we do think about it from this, you know, telling when you know, we call it kind of the period of insect activity, not when when they died. But it’s most of the forensic cases that people are working on aren’t body cases. They’re they’re working on cases of lawsuits. And so they’re hired by a legal team of you know, someone my PhD advisor over the years had worked on, Oh, poultry farm is being sued by a you know, a group of homeowners and they’re saying poultry farms producing flies and smell. And so he’s kind of an expert witness and goes out there does trapping and does all of this stuff, and so we think about it from that case as you know this, that’s really what people that do forensic entomology will do a lot of those cases or stored product pest things, or you know, a home that is infested with termites. First let’s say, and you know, there was a negligent home inspector that didn’t actually look to see and so they’ll bring in someone and say, oh, no, this termitidn’t infestation has been here for ten years, so they did that. Then there are the people that are testifying in court on saying like, yes, we collected these maggots and we can tell that they were two days old or whatever, and so that means that the body was put here on you know, June fourteenth or whatever.

00:44:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, but years ago, I was renting a house and there was a base when I will supposed to utilize, but we would utilize it. So I was I was down there all the time. I knew what was down there. Down there is all kinds of cockroach killer boxes. One day call him and I said, man, there’s a bad cockroach problem in our house. Oh, we’ve never seen that. And I couldn’t be like, come on, I’ve been in the base. I had to just take it. So we got the magazine done dead stuff. The screworm hit me with the life cycle of how a screworm works, like he’s I’m assuming he’s got to have an entry point like a wound.

00:45:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And so so the female screworm fly, the one that’s gonna lay the eggs. They’re looking for a wound or an orifice of some kind. So you know, you can think mouth nos, oh no, I anus full of that. Those are kind of the places that we’re traditionally seeing them in cattle at least, and so they’re looking for those, but we and so they will lay in those locations. But the bigger concern is a wound. And that wound could be anything from an animal that you know, you run it through a shoot and it you know, gets cut, or it could be a you know, an antler that’s fallen off, and so you have this open kind of spot or oh really yeah, so anything like that, and so of any of these locations that could be open, the literature says kind of even something like a tick bite location, something is enough. And so they’re attracted to these open wounds. Female comes in, dumps a bunch of eggs. She’ll lay that wound on that little wound. Those eggs hatch in twelve to twenty four hours they start. Then those maggots essentially they’re super super small. You can’t actually see them, or you can, but most people if they were looking at an animal wouldn’t be able to see it. They start burrowing into the skin.

00:47:00
Speaker 1: Not a big old disco rice style, no, no.

00:47:03
Speaker 3: So so initially they’re like, I could see them, but when we’re talking to people, we generally say that they probably would go undetected for two to three days and so really yeah and so and so they’re pretty soon you would just look, yeah.

00:47:15
Speaker 1: At a distance and just see a festering wound.

00:47:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and so and that’s the whole thing, and so, uh, the those maggots will hatch again. For some reason, the larvae start producing this this odor that then draws in more flies that will then lay more eggs.

00:47:30
Speaker 2: On that way.

00:47:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that’s actually something that’s really interesting. This scientist John Welch, who’s kind of dedicated his life for the last sixty or so years doing this. In the mid nineties, he actually trained a dog to detect uh screw them kind of infestations. Yeah, and so yeah, so there’s like a little bit of work there. It’s kind of a fascinating thing. It’s kind of like people will use dogs to detect bed bugs and things like that as well.

00:47:54
Speaker 1: Okay, so then.

00:47:55
Speaker 3: Those larvae kind of continue to develop, they go through what we call these larv in stars or larval stages. So that’s like a five to seven day period and so here, I don’t know, this would be bad for the audience, but so those would be uh yeah uh so those would be maggots that are that would be three three to four, three to four days old. Uh and so yeah, and again so those are.

00:48:23
Speaker 1: These these are significant, Like it’d be the biggest one in here just for people that are not watching but listening, The biggest one in here would be barely suitable as ice fish and bait.

00:48:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so those are probably three to four days old, and so they’ll kind of be in this wound for five to seven days. During that time, again they’re attracting more and more adults that are laying eggs, and so you can get all these different life stages. At that point, they say, hey, we’re ready to kind of become an adult fly. So they crawl out of the wound and into the soil where they didn’t pew pat, so again that chrysalist type of a thing that you’d have with a butterfly. They hang out in that stage for you know, six d eight days and then they emerge kind of as adults.

00:49:20
Speaker 1: And so.

00:49:22
Speaker 3: Depending on the temperature, you can kind of you know, it’s a two to three week kind of total life cycle. But one thing is is that with an infested animal like you can you can kill an infested animal in five to seven days. And so it’s and it’s what what is killing like if you ran.

00:49:41
Speaker 1: Let’s say we take a cow, a cow gets a nick from barboar or pick give me, give me. The most common reason you see on your on cattle was the most common reason you’d see a cut on a cow.

00:49:55
Speaker 2: You know, barbour is a good one.

00:49:56
Speaker 1: Okay, it gets hung out in the barboar. Yeah, gets a couple of cuts on it. Yep, the fly finds it. Yep, they get out it. It dies in two weeks. Yeah, yeah it could right. Yeah, you do an autopsy, someone does an autopsy. Yep, they’re like like what what what actually killed it?

00:50:17
Speaker 2: Yeah?

00:50:18
Speaker 3: You know, it’s kind of like with with anything right there. There could be a number of different things. So we depending on where you were, you know, where that site was, and they burrow in, you know, you could be.

00:50:29
Speaker 1: Eating they burrow.

00:50:30
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:50:30
Speaker 3: So that’s that’s part of the reason that the name screworm exists is one the larvae have these ridges on them that kind of look like a screw would. The other thing is that they say they screw into the wound. Essentially, they’re burrowing their way through the cavity of the animal.

00:50:45
Speaker 1: And so I was thinking of somehow I was thinking more of them like no, like on the surface, yeah, like the hide or something now and and and so they go so they’re going straight in even yeah, and so they could be eating vital organs, they could be doing anything like that.

00:51:00
Speaker 3: The other thing that we think about.

00:51:01
Speaker 1: But they could see they could get in there and be like like eating lung.

00:51:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, So what happened, So we had a we had an outbreak of screwworm in the Florida Keys in twenty sixteen. It’s the last time that we had an outbreak in the US, like, so yes and no, it was the first time that we’d had an outbreak. We still don’t know where the flies came from. Like it’s this whole wild kind of thing of yes. Yeah, I’m not going to say anything.

00:51:28
Speaker 1: That’s called just that’s called reckless. Yes, yes, very much.

00:51:31
Speaker 3: Like can we retrise that from the records?

00:51:34
Speaker 1: I don’t even know what it’s just reckless. I don’t need some word, so.

00:51:38
Speaker 3: Yes and no. So to answer your question, there are incursions that occur all the time. But the thing is is that in twenty twenty sixteen, we didn’t have this kind of like you know, this kind of infantry essentially that was moving forward that’s super close to the US. This was kind of like it popped up and then we were able to wipe the boat in cattle No sop. It popped up in key Deer. And so what happened is they threatened. Yeah, it’s a threatening endangered species. And so what ended up happening there is that they the people, you know, they’re essentially like pets down there, and and so there are people kind of just like some people.

00:52:16
Speaker 1: But if you’re listening and you’re not familiar with key deer, keys deer key, dear not to me, he’s taking with coos deer. Correct. There’s this little little teeny shit in white tail that’s like like they’re cute, yeah, but he’s no more afraid of the water as a muskrat. I mean, they’ll swim around. You should go check them out, like a little teeny deer. But they’re like nowadays, in the old days you would call them subspecies. I think you’d call them an eco type, an ego, a white tail eco type down in the keys that there aren’t many that they get. You can’t hunt them, they get hit by cars. They haven’t been hunting, so on the very tame. But it’s like a but a species of concern for sure. They’ll blink out yep.

00:53:04
Speaker 3: And so what ended up happening was it kind of went undetected or unreported for a while, and then people started noticing, Hey, why why is you know, my my pet deer stumbling around. And what they ended up realizing was when they checked out the first couple of animals was that screworm had essentially gone laid eggs near the antlers and had burrowed their way through the skull.

00:53:28
Speaker 1: Of the animals.

00:53:29
Speaker 3: And we’re eating the brains of the kid deer on his pedical like the ailer base.

00:53:34
Speaker 1: You’re kidding?

00:53:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I have some some wild photos that are just kind of here.

00:53:38
Speaker 1: Send them to Phil. Ok So Phil wants to see me.

00:53:44
Speaker 5: You were talking about Let’s say a Kyle got stuck in some barbed wire and she got a cut on her leg, and so that’s a long ways from the brain as opposed to a deer getting it in the antler and it’s going right into the brain.

00:53:57
Speaker 2: How long does.

00:53:58
Speaker 5: That take to I mean, what what’s that process?

00:54:01
Speaker 1: Yeah?

00:54:02
Speaker 3: So some of it is you. You potentially wouldn’t have, you know, complete migration in in that location. What would be the best way for me to send the Oh sorry that.

00:54:11
Speaker 1: Uh, if you’re on a fed with with Korean, you can send them to her and then she can ford him on it.

00:54:16
Speaker 3: Okay, can I just give you because I don’t I don’t I’m not connected with the internet or anything here. Okay, Yeah, can I just give you my computer and you can just send this PowerPoint over?

00:54:26
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so you know what we’re thinking about doing. You got some good photos. Yeah, so we do this calendar series we did, like fed Up Deer Stands.

00:54:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, have one in my house?

00:54:42
Speaker 1: Oh you do. I don’t want I’m getting out of the calendar business, but we might do one last calendar called aft Up Wildlife Diseases. Yeah, and it’s just every month that’s a picture of a terrible wildlife disease. Yeah, and that’s going to kind of close out the series because no one will buy.

00:55:00
Speaker 3: I don’t know, you’re gonna have a bunch of intomologists that want to buy.

00:55:02
Speaker 1: The problem is with the series is every year, like people buy them a little bit. Yeah, a little bit less all the time because calendar is fading out. But to have a calendar that was so disgusting you follow me, Yeah, so disgusting that no one bought it, it would just end the calendar.

00:55:22
Speaker 3: Maybe or it becomes really really popular.

00:55:25
Speaker 1: Now it’s gonna end it up wild Life Diseases. Yeah, that we’ll put January. It can be screw worm.

00:55:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it could be it could be screworm. You know, it could be a blue tongue.

00:55:33
Speaker 1: It could be.

00:55:34
Speaker 4: EHDVT calendar off like one slide.

00:55:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, just the calendar was called one ft up wildlife disease.

00:55:43
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, but do we want to put this in the video version?

00:55:49
Speaker 2: But okay, it’s gonna get some kind of warming.

00:55:54
Speaker 1: There’s a question I wanted to ask you earlier that can we back up to We got you so whacked out now by the time we puictures drop, But it was a question I want to ask you earlier. What can you explain real quick? We have a thing like like what are the you know, like a meat bee. We call him a meat bee. Yeah, let’s say you’re cleaning fresh that you’re cleaning fresh fish, okay, or you’re uning a burger on in your yard. The bee that comes to that, his motivation is nothing like a fly, right.

00:56:31
Speaker 3: Yes and no. You know, they’re looking for a protein source. So depending on on what it is. So, there are things, uh, there’s a bunch of different species that could be wasps that will feed on meat. There are things called vulture bees actually that will feed on decomposing material and stuff like that I had. I had a colleague in California that did some work on them. So again they’re looking for a food source. So it’s going to be a similar thing.

00:56:53
Speaker 1: Depending on looking to lay is like now I come to a fresh fish, he’s never looking, he’s not looking to eat the fish. Depending it depends on the fly.

00:57:02
Speaker 3: And so obviously you’re gonna have some organisms that are gonna you know, your blowflies are going to be looking for a you know, a place to lay their eggs. But then some of your standard you know, run of the mill near your house fly or something like that. It might be coming there to lay eggs, or it could just be coming there to you know, defeed as well, you know, and he might eat.

00:57:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then he might later come back and be like, I’m gonna lay my eggs on that it’s rotten. Yeah, okay.

00:57:28
Speaker 3: And so again it’s gonna be a That’s the one problem with with anything is that there’s nuance in in all of these and so you are going to have some stuff with uh, you know, any of these blowflies or a lot of the blowflies that are coming into look for, you know, a place to lay their eggs, and you will see that you know, we’ve done some forensic work where you know, we’re putting a dead pig out in the environment and then collecting maggots and stuff like that for our forensic entomology class. And you will see you’ll see blowflies that are showing up with and you know, two minutes of us unloading it from a truck and then they those guys are looking for a place to uh light eggs. They’re attracted to the you know, the smell of death, the decomposition, everything like that. But once the body cavity and everything like that opens up, you’re going to get egg lay. But you also are just going to get them feeding on secretions and everything like that that that exists there as well.

00:58:23
Speaker 1: So how many species of fly in the US? I don’t know how you guys would divide it up? Like I know that you have like dip terrace, so you have you know, little midges andnoseums and but like, but how many species of fly are out there, like visible clearly visible flies?

00:58:45
Speaker 3: Well, I don’t know if I could tell you a number, right, say that many? Yeah, yeah, And and again the diversity of them, you know it, you know, it goes from everything to a mosquito, which you know you could see, uh, your horse flies right like so and and then you have you know, no CM’s your chilicoids or your lepticon ops. You know, these biting midges that are transmitting pathogens and things like that. So yeah, it’s just like dozens and dozens, yeah, or thousands probably Yeah, no kid, Yeah and so and again in the US, I couldn’t tell you exactly. I’m not someone that does fly systematics of kind of understanding all the relatedness, but you know, yeah, there’s there’s a ton of.

00:59:26
Speaker 1: Them, perhaps thousands of feah. Okay, all right, So when we got y’all screwed up with trying to get the pictures, you were laying out talking about the key key here. Yeah, keys your key. I think it’s key. I think it’s key key. Yeah, you’re laying that out. We’re talking about the getting into the brain. And Doug was bringing up let’s say it. Let’s say a cow gets a cut.

00:59:47
Speaker 2: On its hit leg, yeah or something. It’s hip.

00:59:50
Speaker 1: No, there’s no like you know, you can’t. He’s not in the lungs, he’s not in the brain.

00:59:55
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:59:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so again, in those types of situations, you probably it’s just going to be invading that tissue there. It’s not going to migrate and move. It’s not like it’s targeting the brain or something like that. It’s it’s just looking for an open an open wound. So wherever that open wound is, and then that is essentially then at that point going to be expanding out. So you’re just going to have this cavity that is forming. And a lot of times what ends up happening is that if it’s not something where it’s like complete consumption, it’s actually the you know, a secondary bacterial infection that ends up being the problem. And so you know, just just think of a sort of one of the fever exactly. And again, like what you’ll see clinically in animals is kind of you know, a lot of those standard like failure to thrive symptoms that you would see, you know, drooping head, animals that are isolating, kind of a lot of these things. You know, oh, a very specific odor that’s coming out of it, and then wounds that essentially you know, might even look small on the surface, but it’s a deep cavity that that’s going inwards. And again all of that is just opening up for you know, secondary bacterial infection.

01:00:59
Speaker 5: So do they like horn flies, face flies, you know, stuff that I’ve dealt with death cattle? Do these are they also attracted like eyes and nose and that they’re around the head all the time.

01:01:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so so horn flies not as much. Sometimes you sometimes you will see them in and around the head, you know, I guess that’s where the you know, with horn flies, but generally you’ve seen horn flies like on the back of the animal and everythings like that. So yeah, these guys, they they will be because they’re going to be attracted to you know, the nose and the mouth and and things like that. But it’s really they’re looking for those kind of open wounds.

01:01:40
Speaker 5: So yeah, those are wounds. So it’s a little bit different. I’m not face flies horn flies, but so that’s different. Okay, what I’m the other thing, And I asked you about this before being uh, it’s been a weird question. But I was a Catholic boy, you know, and and when when.

01:02:04
Speaker 1: You should want to talk about this here, Doug, let’s just talk.

01:02:06
Speaker 2: About this quickly. And I remember the nuns saying there was a purpose for.

01:02:10
Speaker 1: Everything, right, Like, oh, okay, I thought were Yeah.

01:02:15
Speaker 5: And so the purpose of and you can and I’ve always I thought about that. There’s a lot of things that you know, it didn’t make sense to me then, but that always made sense to me, Like there’s a purpose for everything. Mosquitoes have a purpose, flies have a purpose, you know, Maggot’s decomposed, decomposition, all of those sort of things.

01:02:34
Speaker 1: This is a very human centric perspective, right.

01:02:38
Speaker 5: But but what’s the purpose? I mean, isn’t it like an evolution? There isn’t there what’s the purpose of this?

01:02:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that’s the thing that’s It’s funny, and you posed this before, and it’s you know, kind of most of the time if you ask an entomologist or you ask someone, it’s like, oh, you know, should we just get rid of all the mosquitos? They’ll talk about ecosystem services, bats and whatever else that is he did, right.

01:03:01
Speaker 1: Well, what won’t be the cost of getting rid of mosquito? Exactly?

01:03:04
Speaker 4: Yeah?

01:03:04
Speaker 3: And and and someone can you can steal man in argument kind of again this this USCA researcher John Welch had he who has worked on this. He’s like, my goal is to get rid of them. He’s like, I don’t see any purpose for them. He must God, yeah, yeah, very much.

01:03:20
Speaker 4: So.

01:03:20
Speaker 3: Uh And but he’s he’s worked his entire career.

01:03:24
Speaker 4: You know.

01:03:24
Speaker 3: I remember seeing him talk after the key deer kind of thing in the Florida Keys, and he was at a conference and he broke down crying at how like horrible it was just seeing these animals that, you know, they’re collecting up, animals that are staggering around that they’re having to euthanize. And and again he’s like, he’s like, my goal is if I could, I would get rid of them.

01:03:44
Speaker 1: So history, I mean just yeah, history has not been kind to that sentiment. Correct, Yeah, but I want to top So the key dere deal, we kind of we didn’t finish the story. Yeah, there’s still there’s not right now. A whole bunch of key deer killed by screwworms. Correct. Yeah, what happened?

01:04:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, so back in the nineteen thirties. Oh we’re just in twenty sixty, yes, correct, correct. But what essentially happened, and this goes back to the thirties and the forties and the fifties, how we eradicated it originally is that these two USDA scientists came up with this idea called steril insect technique, and pretty much it takes advantage of the screwworm’s biology. So what they figured out was that female flies only mate once, and so if you can produce a bunch of male flies and you can throw them out in the environment, they’ll meet up with a female mate with her and since she only mates once and she got the signal that she made it, she’s not ever going to produce viable offspring. And so what they essentially did in twenty sixteen is they went in and they did a bunch of sterile releases of flies, and they knock the population out and they completely eradicated screwroom from Florida keys using this steril and sterilizing cobal And it’s essentially it’s a radioactive cobalt that they’re using, and they’re irradiating flies.

01:05:07
Speaker 4: Uh.

01:05:07
Speaker 3: And some of it is like a process that I was, you know, we were we were kind of going through this thing. But yeah, so they’re producing down in Panama currently about one hundred and ten million flies a week, yeah, radiating them, yeah, yeah, And so they’re irradiating them to the UH. And again they’re using a radioactive isotope uh and people are currently them just enough to kind of kill as nuts. Yeah, yeah, exactly, and and so that’s that’s what they’re doing. And again, these two scientists, first we were playing around trying to figure out like how they could do it what they were doing. There was some previous work that had shown that you could do this in a in another fly species that they are like, hey, can we try it with screwer And they were able to figure out, you know, it is it’s kind of like that fine line between uh, sterile flies and non steriflies. And over time they actually had they’ve had mistakes where they didn’t sterilize the flies appropriately. That happened down in Mexico.

01:06:04
Speaker 1: Correct.

01:06:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so currently we only have this one sterile fly facility. There was one in Mexico when we were trying to eradicate it that they’ve now taken offline that was producing five hundred million flies a week and so yeah, and so and again we’re just flooding the environment with these flies any to essentially be like, hey, we want to find any female fly and so they can mate and then we wipe them out.

01:06:32
Speaker 2: That way.

01:06:33
Speaker 3: It’s a brilliant technique. It’s just kind of like over time with everything, right, it’s this evolutionary adaptation of you know, over time, we’ve had our sterile flies that don’t compete, and so then they’ve had to change the strain that they’ve used. So they’ve gone and essentially collected new flies colonize them. It’s this whole kind of like fascinating process that they’re doing. But that’s kind of been the game plan, and so that’s what they did.

01:06:56
Speaker 1: Back into area where there’s a blow up yep and millions of sterile flies. U.

01:07:06
Speaker 6: Okay, we got what looks to be my dog on the right. Yeah, well I got ask I’ll tell you, yeah, we got.

01:07:19
Speaker 1: Well, no, I got a question. I got not not a question, but their day. You’re the perfect audience for this. You guys both are the perfect audience for this.

01:07:27
Speaker 2: They are.

01:07:27
Speaker 1: Now I’m talking about Buddy Kevin Murphy. He’s talking about when he’s a kid working on a working on a farm, and I said, what was your like, what were your Responsibilities’s talking about working on the farm and he’s a little kid, and he was talking about one of the things they would do is he would work on the They were experimenting with artificial insemination. They had a bull. There’s nothing to do with worring fly. If you ever heard this or not, this might be common practice. They had a bull. They re routed this bullspecker. You follow me, So it was going off backward. Re routed his pecker surgically, had a vet come in flipped. They took out. There’s like a they took out. They took out like the packer. It’s not a it’s not a vaculum, but like the rigid structure. Took it up, removed it to the point where a guy was able to keep it, removed it and re routed it. Then they would hang a giant imagine a necklace that’s like a ballpoint pen hanging on his neck. Why but ink blotder hanging on his neck. You turn him out with the cows. He can tell when a cow is and heat. Oh yeah, he jumps up there, but he’s been rerouted, so doesn’t do anybody any good, does him?

01:09:05
Speaker 2: Give it?

01:09:06
Speaker 1: Not the cow any good. But when he jumps up there, he ink blots her with his ink blotter. Then all the kids gotta do is he looks out and there’s no a coyle of the ink blot on her. She must be ripe.

01:09:23
Speaker 4: A.

01:09:25
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of that?

01:09:27
Speaker 2: I had not.

01:09:27
Speaker 5: I was thinking, well, this must be a new way of gathering. But makes nothing but sense if you’re doing AI. I mean, old way is just let that bull out there.

01:09:39
Speaker 2: That’s the that’s the old way.

01:09:43
Speaker 1: So neither you guys ever heard of that?

01:09:45
Speaker 4: No?

01:09:45
Speaker 1: No, that’s very interesting, man, very interesting. You can make like a a movie about that.

01:09:53
Speaker 5: Yeah, we just stand and watch the colics and go, oh, she’s ready, you know, I mean that was a daily, daily thing.

01:09:59
Speaker 1: I thought that was really something. So you releasing all these flies? Yeah, millions? Now about this the process here of putting the sterills out? Can you give me an estimate? And maybe you can’t take the key to your situation? Yeah, so you’re on big Poney or whatever, one of those keys, one of those keys. This is probably impossible say like, how many to be effective? Do you need to put so many flies out that the majority of the flies on the landscape are your doctored flies? Or will a percent ultimately do it?

01:10:40
Speaker 2: Yeah?

01:10:40
Speaker 3: So I couldn’t tell you what that number is actually going to be. One thing that’s actually interesting about them is that they the flies exist in kind of a relatively low adult number, like two to three hundred per square mile type of a thing. Really, yeah, yeah, and so it’s one of the actually I just I just learned this when I was in a Yeah. Yeah, and so it was something that I recently learned when we were when we were doing a workshop. And and so again you’re just you’re just hammering that environment, and so yeah, maybe maybe there is I wouldn’t even want to estimate how many adult flies are in that environment. And again you’re just let’s just just dump as many as we can.

01:11:24
Speaker 1: So the theoretically be that on a property on an island, on a whatever, that there could be just like as low as like some number of hundreds of males. Yeah, but you could go there and be like, I’m gonna put thousands.

01:11:40
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, and that would be the kind of the idea get overwhelmed their proof of concept with any of this. They actually when they were testing all of this, they did it on the island of curse Ow to wipe out the screwer and problems that were.

01:11:52
Speaker 1: There, and so they actually start taking the director. Yeah, it’s I.

01:11:56
Speaker 3: Actually I couldn’t tell you exactly where it is okay. And again they were using this as kind of this okay, well flies aren’t moving in, so we can see what we can do kind of in this situation.

01:12:08
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re not worried about new ones coming.

01:12:11
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:12:12
Speaker 4: And so.

01:12:14
Speaker 3: With this situation again, like in the Florida keys situation, I was just looking, they dumped one hundred and one hundred and eighty eight million flies and and so yeah, it’s over about a one month or a couple month period, and yeah, they’re just hammering that environment is gone.

01:12:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, but dudes that are living there have to be walking out and it’s got to be like seems like there’s flies everywhere.

01:12:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know. That’s something that I’ve I’ve asked some people about is kind of like, well, if if we get screwer them in the US, are people going to be okay with this idea just because it because they kind of will do two different things. And it’s kind of an interesting situation when we think about public’s perception of science in general, right, it’s kind of changed over time. The way that they release these either is with ground release chambers, where they essentially they’re boxes that are full of these pupie or they drop them from airplanes, and so they release them out of airplanes, out of the back of airdults. Yeah, the adults and so and then they’ll fall to the ground.

01:13:19
Speaker 1: And so new kind of cam trails.

01:13:21
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:13:21
Speaker 3: Well, and and you know, it’s just they do that in California for Mediterranean fruit fly. You know, they’re releasing you know, multiple hundred million flies a week in California to control Mediterranean fruit fly. So it’s it’s something that’s done. It’s just not something that a lot of people know about. And so and also something that’s really small versus you know, uh, you know, here’s here’s an adult fly. It’s your standard kind of blowfly size.

01:13:45
Speaker 2: So it’s the same technique with the fruit flies.

01:13:48
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, exactly, you’re sterile flies, stale, stale, stable.

01:13:54
Speaker 1: If I saw that dude hanging around, no, I think I would recognize him as not being a normal one.

01:14:00
Speaker 3: So and again electric blue, yeah, and so those are One thing that’s interesting is that they actually will change color depending on what they feed on, which is kind of a really strange thing. We have in the US though, a very closely related fly that looks nearly identical and so it’s kind of a challenge when it when it comes down to it of differentiating them. You can do it, not that difficult if you look at it underneath the microscope. But you know, we have this secondary screw worm that is common. It doesn’t feed on living flesh, it doesn’t do anything like that, and so we end up kind of that’s one of the problems that you end up running into is identifying them and putting out traps to try and monitor for them. Is the attract that the USDA has essentially developed also attracts all the blowflies because it’s essentially just a combination of a bunch of chemicals that then mimic rotting flesh essentially.

01:14:57
Speaker 1: So no, when you go in like let’s say you go into a community agricultural community, Yeah, and you’re like, hey, y’all got a you know, there’s a there’s a screw worm outbreak and we’re gonna we’re gonna dump two hundred million sterile flies. Yeah. How many days is it until all those sterile flies are gone?

01:15:24
Speaker 3: Yeah? I couldn’t put a number uh on it.

01:15:28
Speaker 1: There.

01:15:29
Speaker 3: There is specific kind of criteria of when you can call an area eradicated that they do so for an area to be you know, free of now those bugs live, so an adult fly in the environment will live a few weeks and and so and again it’ll just continually propagate and so what and that’s part of the reason. But they can’t because there’s sterile you know, correct and so, and that’s what you are looking looking for. But there’s going to be some individuals that made it with a you know, a non sterile fly. And so that’s why you kind of have to do these releases over and over. And while you’re doing that, you’re monitoring and looking for if the flies you are collecting if they’re sterile or if they’re not sterile. And so that’s that’s part of the process as well. And so it’s kind of a continued release over time. It’s not just like, you know, let’s just drop all these flies this one time. You want to continue to do it because you’re going to in essence miss some of them at some point.

01:16:32
Speaker 1: At some points, why is there and I know that you know, the press will kind of they’re like, I mean, it’s a native way, but people will look and there’s a sensational quality to it. Okay, there’s like flesh eating flies, right, there’s a sensational quality to it. People are going to read it. But from talking to you, it seems like it’s almost a non problem if it’s so easily remedy, Like, is there a scenario in which you could get like do you? Is there a scenario in which you could go haywire to where you’re not able to produce enough to catch it.

01:17:09
Speaker 3: So that’s part of the problem, is that, Yeah, the USDA and kind of researchers in general have we’ve relied on steril insect technique and that’s been the whole focus of everything like that. But we can’t say that it’s a non problem because currently US doing steril releases isn’t controlling the problem.

01:17:30
Speaker 1: Where is it not controlling the problem in Mexico?

01:17:33
Speaker 3: That so, the thing is is that if steril releases were controlling the issue, initially, it never would have moved out of Panama, And so it moved out of Panama, and then since twenty twenty three it’s been moving its way up through Mexico, and so we’re doing stero releases in Mexico. And the big concern really when it comes down to it, and again it’s not a concern as it is more of an infrastructure problem is that we have one facility that’s producing flies, you know, the Kopek facility in Panama producing one hundred and ten million flies a week, but if it gets into the US, we’re going to need five or six hundred million flies a week. And part of the problem is is that where we now have to you know, it’s like when you build infrastructure for anything, is that we’re at this point where, oh shit, if it gets here, this is a problem. But it’s a two three year lag time to build a facility to be able to produce flies, because this isn’t a oh hey, let’s just bring in these flies. It has to be you have radiation. You you know, all of the security clearance and security kind of protocols and safety that go into you know, having you know, nuclear radioactive elements in an area to irradiate flies is something. And then it’s also the idea of well, we’re now bringing flies that aren’t sterile into this environment. And one thing as a researcher that’s very challenging is that the USDA has essentially said, hey, we’re the one that are doing this, We’re we’re working on this problem. And so like no one in the US can bring flies to do actual research here in the US because they don’t want it getting out. And so the USDA has kind of put this this block on that, and I totally understand they want to be able to control the situation. And it’s been hey, you know, we have this thing that works, no one needs to worry about it. But now they’re like, okay, let’s do something. They just put out a call for you know, they dedicated one hundred million dollars to try to get researchers to apply to try to do something, if it’s extension, if it’s outreach, if it’s actually doing monitoring for things like that.

01:19:40
Speaker 1: But it but the only tool right now, the only known tool to combat is the sterile.

01:19:46
Speaker 3: Correct and that’s part of the concern is that that’s not working and that’s where we put all We put all our eggs in that one basket. And so now it’s what do we do. And the other thing is is that back in the day, you know, I had a couple of students.

01:20:00
Speaker 1: I talked to them.

01:20:01
Speaker 3: They come from beef cattle background in New Mexico, and they’re like, oh, yeah, my grandparents talked about you know, during calving season because that’s another place that you’ll see it as in the navel. And so during calving season they would go out, they would they described it to me as that purple stuff whatever it was of some you know, organic phosphate or something like that that they were applying, and it did great. The problem is that all of those products have because we haven’t had to be a problem, they’ve all been taken off of EPA registry, they’ve been taken off of you know, FDA registry. So currently we have two products that are under emergency use that can be used in animals, and there is nothing else that’s developed or licensed to even treat animals with. And so it’s a it’s kind of this multi pronged approach. And then from the insecticide side to try to control them. No one’s worked with screw them. And so on a label, if it doesn’t say that you can use it on screworm, you can’t use it on screworm. And so you have to follow what the label says. So if it says it’s for hornflies and face flies and stable flies and house flies, right, but if you end up using it for screwerm, well you’re now breaking the law, and so it’s.

01:21:08
Speaker 1: A why is that, Like I know that on chemical compounds, when you get a patent on a chemical compound, you’re actually patenting the application. Yeah, and with with some of that, Yeah, okay, so who says you can’t use it for the e p A. So the e p A is so the UK, not the manufacturer patent holder.

01:21:25
Speaker 3: No, and so federal law correct, when they get that license, it will say on the label this is used for termite.

01:21:32
Speaker 1: So this is used for permitted exactly.

01:21:35
Speaker 3: And so that’s the problem is that, you know, we have lots of products that are probably effective, but again none of us have been able to do the work. And there’s you know, talking to my USCA colleagues, there’s like, yeah, uh, there’s a whole lot of work that we don’t know, like even standard just like behavior stuff. You know a lot of my work that that I do is insect and animal behavior, and so it’s you know, we don’t necessarily know how they move, how they’re in or acting like in because we kind of put all of our eggs in this one basket. And also when we did all this work, we did it all in South America, and so it. We have a very different climate, you know, in New Mexico, in southern New Mexico, in the tip of Texas is as reservoirs, where you know, screwroom would continually develop because it doesn’t get cold enough during that period of time. The rest of the US, you know, luckily, like here in Montana, if screwroom showed up, it might be an issue during the summer, but it’s going to die out in the Yeah, it’ll kill them in the winter. But that’s the big problem with those southern states and or you know, that’s those southwestern states. And so there’s a lot of these different things that we don’t know that we’re kind of like, all right, what do we do now? And so it’s kind of rushing to figure out, like what can we do? What can we not do? And again we have to follow all of the you know, all of the laws that exist. And so if it’s if it’s cattle or if it’s you know, a big concern is that it it’s if it gets into wildlife, what do you do then just runs rampant?

01:22:59
Speaker 1: Right? Has anybody drawn a line? Well, I’ll explain what I’m getting at through different thing. I had a body mine that worked on a project years ago. They were trying to draw a line at what could possibly be the northward spread of the Burmese python. And it would just be that you would put them in burrows, yeah, like and make enclosures, put them in burrows and then see if they car alled it out in the spring or not. Yeah, right, because that’s the thing is like at a point it’s too cold, they can’t over winter. Yeah, what what would be the line along the UA? Yeah, and have you guys really refined Yeah?

01:23:36
Speaker 3: No, So so that’s something that again, there a lot of it is. It’s funny up until maybe honestly, probably the last year, there wasn’t a whole lot of there’s like all the historical old work that was done. It was really hard to find though. You know, even from a teaching perspective, if we’re trying to talk about screwerm, I’m like trying to pull images and stuff like this, and it’s you know, I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel. And so a lot of this stuff wasn’t.

01:23:59
Speaker 1: Like old references or may not have exactly and.

01:24:03
Speaker 3: And some of that had to do with like the USA is like it’s down in Panama, Like, we don’t like the effort that we’re going to put in to prepare all of this new material. It isn’t an issue for us at this moment. So when it comes to uh kind of the expansion, like there there were cases that it potentially would get up to Canada and really though, you’re going to see it kind of this centralized you know, up through up through Colorado. Uh Utah, Yeah, and so and so you will see it in those locations. Again, it our biggest concern now at this point is livestock movement because obviously we have animals that are that are moving and they get shipped from you know, let’s say New Mexico and then they get shipped over to Colorado, or they get shipped in Montana or they you know, who knows, and then it’s well, we imported a case and so then it exists in this area and so it may not stick around. But if you have an impact where you know there. I know that back in the thirties there was in one section of Texas, screwroom killed one hundred and eighty eight thousand cows in one year.

01:25:14
Speaker 1: Are you serious?

01:25:15
Speaker 2: Yeah?

01:25:16
Speaker 1: And what timeframe was that?

01:25:17
Speaker 6: Again?

01:25:18
Speaker 3: That was in nineteen thirty three and one year three, Yeah, and so when when we first started seeing it, and so yeah, and so it’s a it is a big concern. And again it’s it’s that problem of stopping forward progress. And that’s where you know, talking about this idea of is it a concern? It is a concern because at the moment we haven’t been able to completely stop forward progress. And so it’s you know, part of my whole thing here is to be able to communicate because it it isn’t something of well, hopefully it doesn’t ever come to the US and I don’t have to deal with it, right, but if it does, we need a whole lot of people to be able to identify, oh, hey this looks weird. Hey, I can submit a sample to you know, to confirm that that’s what it is, and then we can you know, you know, the USDA has kind of put out their their game plan on what they would do. It’s like quarantine in an area, so that you restrict animal movement and things like that.

01:26:13
Speaker 1: For that the animals are going to be more likely the animals are gonna be more likely to move it long distances than the flies flying around.

01:26:20
Speaker 3: Correct, Yeah, so so the literature says that like, these flies can fly ten to fifteen miles. In practice, I will will say, you know, it’s the one thing that science says and what happens practically, Like there’s some studies that show that house flies will fly twenty kilometers and it’s like one mark recapture study that someone did. It’s like, no, they’re going to fly you know, one hundred yards to your your neighbor’s farm, you know. And so the movement doesn’t exist. And again, like scroom has relatively narrow tolerances for temperature. One thing that’s interesting about them is they won’t fly over bodies of water. Oh really, yeah, they’ll fly along it so like a riparian area. But if like the reason that we had we stopped the movement. Different again, so you know.

01:27:07
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you about just be interesting too, and it’s kind of applicable man Like in and sort of the immediate post nine to eleven era, I was working on a magazine piece where I was at a a I was at like a convention, what they called it a stock detective convention that dealton livestock theft. And but it had this whole biosecurity element to it. They had found in Afghanistan when they’re doing all their raids on al Qaeda areas, they had found where they were like swapping information about livestock diseases. Okay, like they were at least exploring the idea of a biohazard lives. So this guy was there and he presented and I sat in on the presentation, and they ran models of say a person went to a stockyard and I can’t remember where his stockyard was. I mean it was somewhere in the central US, like Kansas or whatever. They’re like, say a terrorist went to a stockyard and they ran a scenario where he swabbed the nose. He swabs a half dozen cows at a stockyard with an anthrax form, and they ran a model ye about its explosion, you know, and it was like alarming, right, like movement of animals.

01:28:40
Speaker 4: You know.

01:28:42
Speaker 1: That kind of makes me think of this where with the thing in the keys, Like do you ever have I don’t want to give anybody ideas out there. I don’t know how many dudes listened to the show, but like, has anybody ever brought this up that it could just be like a a like an economic weapon.

01:29:03
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and and and that’s something that we see with you know, it’s a concern with any of these uh, either invasive species that we think of, you know, it’s bioterrorism at that point. And and it is it’s it’s thinking about the movement of if it’s screw them, if it’s you know what a big thing is cattle fever tick, which is a huge deal, and so like if you were to move those into the US, that’s going to you know, or or even bringing in.

01:29:32
Speaker 2: You know.

01:29:33
Speaker 3: A thing that I think is kind of relevant is you know, with blue tongue virus, which is transmitted by these these biding midges, you know when we have outbreaks. You know, currently there’s some weird dynamics of blue tongue going on in Europe, Like you end up halting trade because of those things and the economic damage and kind of you know, the downstream consequences that exist are are present. And so it is something that is it is thought about what that really looks like. I don’t know, you know, it’s it’s I’m not sitting in on those meetings of people strategizing people like it even plausible or not, But I think it would be plausible, right. I think that if you were to do that, it would just be a matter of Yeah, with something like that, you’d have to start a colony, and you’d have to do all this stuff to then get them to then bring them to the US. And what that would look like to by some level of expertise, yeah, exactly.

01:30:25
Speaker 1: You know, a while back, those a few weeks, few months ago, maybe the Trump administration floated the idea that like they’re trying to you know, they like attacked egg prices, right, the Trump administration was like trying to like lower beef prices. And there’s this conversation of and I don’t even know the dog might know how this works, but there’s a conversation, well, let’s bring more beef from Argentina. Let’s bring more beef from Mexico. Yeah, uh, this has planned all that, right. I mean, like you show up with a truckload, like you show up at the Douglas Arizona crossing, yep. And I don’t know, I don’t know how it works, but like presumably you show up with a truckload of cows, our guys customs or whatever, the veterinarian aspect of customs in that’s got to be a real question, right, So where they come from?

01:31:18
Speaker 3: And yeah, so all the animal ports of entry are currently closed due to screworm with Mexico are Yeah.

01:31:23
Speaker 1: So that was kind of a non idea. Yes, you could bring packaged meating.

01:31:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so you could do something like that. And one thing again, I’m I’m new to New Mexico, but one thing that is interesting, you know, I guess for everybody is that New Mexico has the largest animal port of entry anywhere in the US. So we import more than fifty percent of the cattle that come across from Mexico. At the Santa there said border crossing near all.

01:31:46
Speaker 1: Passes and it’s closed because of screw worms.

01:31:48
Speaker 3: It’s so all of the border crossings are so Douglas Columbus, any of them in Texas. We currently are not importing animals from Mexico because of screworm. So what that looks like like in different ways, I don’t know. I’m not an economist, so I can’t speak to some of that, but what it it? Yeah, they’re they’re currently closed and so uh and when they do real who whose call is that to make ust It’s yeah, it’s APHIS’s call, and I think that, you know, there are going to be some downstream consequences. You know, I have a I have a colleague who you know, works with you know, he works in in cattle, and he was talking about, you know, just the drivers that you know, would be bringing those animals across, so then truck them. You know, the border has been closed for multiple months, and it’s like they had to go find new jobs because that was their job. So what’s gonna happen when the ports open back up. Are they just gonna you know, they all have new jobs.

01:32:45
Speaker 4: You know.

01:32:45
Speaker 3: It’s kind of like when you know, when the when the government fired all these USCA employees, it’s like, oh, hey, we know we actually needed those people. But like they can’t just sit there, so they went and found new jobs.

01:32:55
Speaker 1: Did they doze a bunch of screwroom guys? So not?

01:32:59
Speaker 3: I think they tried with a lot of these things. They were like, oh yeah, you’ve been here for you know, because it was all these temporary employees. So if it was screw them or it was highpath avian influenza, they’re like, oh yeah, we need to fire all these people. And they’re like, oh no, we need those people, so they like they fired them and then like took away their government emails and then brought them back. And it like, I you know, I’m I’m very good friends with the people that run the screwerm lab. And it’s been a very and a lot of just uscay like oh shit, we fired him, yeah, call him back, Yeah yeah, Well, and and that’s kind of the whole thing, right, and and so it is. It’s there’s a lot of these infrastructure pieces that we don’t know what it’s going to look like. And there’s a lot of people that want that border to open, but the and there’s going to be policies. So like currently the the process will be, you know, the animals already dipped with kumafas when they come across the border anyways, like to deal with cattle fever, tick or other ectoparasites. But they’re going to be treating them with ivermectin and moving them across the border when that ends up opening.

01:34:02
Speaker 1: COVID medication those jokes, yeah, aha, for.

01:34:06
Speaker 3: Us, it’s one of these things that it’s like it’s a it’s been something that has been used for so long in both human and animal production systems. And so, but there are going to be all of these different things that go on. But yeah, currently the borders are shut down because of that, so they’re yeah, what that looks like moving forward? I know that there’s like rumblings that people want it to open, but it also doesn’t seem like we’re anywhere near that actually being the case.

01:34:36
Speaker 1: Let’s jump to an area. Let’s let’s jump into an area where there is like high rates. Okay, like a real trouble spot.

01:34:44
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:34:46
Speaker 1: Uh, well he talked about it with cattle, but it’s like in an area that has screworm, it’s got to it’s it’s somewhat indiscriminate, right, correct, But I mean like, yeah, there’s not like a deer strain and a cow strain. It’s like all things get hit.

01:35:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, and and I focus I’ve focused mostly on cattle.

01:35:03
Speaker 1: Here pull that picture because yeah, I saw a dog.

01:35:06
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:35:06
Speaker 1: Correct.

01:35:06
Speaker 3: And so in Mexico currently, the uh if you look at the distribution of in that middle one is a video too. If you click on it, I can’t, Oh you can’t, okay, No, it’s okay.

01:35:17
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:35:17
Speaker 3: So so in Mexico, the number one infestation is in cattle. Number two is in dogs. And part of that though, is brain paying open up. Yeah yeah, and so and then that they got through the bone.

01:35:31
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:35:32
Speaker 3: So so they’re just chewing through everything.

01:35:34
Speaker 1: They can chew through your bones.

01:35:35
Speaker 3: I don’t know exactly how that all looks, uh, to be completely honest, but yeah, it’s not great. And so again, so it is, it’s indiscriminate. And I talk, I talk a lot about cattle. But that’s because that’s the thing that we look at right like we’re looking at animals, we’re running them through a shoot, we’re doing all of that. Oh yeah, it’s just like a lot.

01:35:56
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:35:57
Speaker 3: So that’s a key deer that has its brain uh essentially eaten.

01:36:03
Speaker 4: So it’s alive with like a hole in its skull, correct and its brain exposed. That beautiful.

01:36:11
Speaker 1: But they didn’t get in on him. They didn’t get in on him because he dropped his no. No. So that’s just a he’s.

01:36:19
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:36:20
Speaker 3: And so again it’s it’s one of these things that my concern and again, like wanting to communicate to a group, you know, a group of outdoors people, is that we’re not looking at animals, you know, we’re not looking at wildlife because we’re you know, We’re not rounding up deer and running them through a shoot to inspect them, right.

01:36:42
Speaker 1: And so yeah, you don’t take a dry you know, no one’s taking a drive every morning, and you see how the hurts exactly.

01:36:46
Speaker 3: And so the problem is is that, yeah, it’s gonna get into wildlife and it’s going to run rampant in wildlife because wildlife are going to get to places people can’t get to. Sure, and then it’s going to exist and you’re going to have animals that die, and then the those maggots are going to crawl off pupid, emerge as adults, and they’re going to infect some other animals, and it’s going to be this you know, propagating issue.

01:37:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, like it could live in a deer herd. Correct, It could live in a deer herd somewhere for some period of time before a stockman realizes correct.

01:37:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so and that’s kind of the concern. And so in Mexico, you know, talking to these veterinarians that we brought up for this training, they were saying, like we asked about wildlife, They’re like, oh, yeah, one hundred percent is in wildlife. We just we can’t we can’t document those cases, and so because of that, it’s it is it’s this kind of this area that kind of exists that we don’t really know what to do with. And even when it comes to you know, outreach and stuff like that, we can go to a you know, cattleman’s association meeting, we can talk to brand inspectors, we can do a lot of that type of stuff. But when it comes to communicating to a bunch of hunters or outdoors people in general, it’s a more challenging kind of environment to be able to communicate to them, to develop, uh, you know, different tools to be able to you know, do that. You know, a couple of colleagues of mine we’re putting together a survey for New Mexico where we went to uh, survey hunters, you know, kind of outdoors people, cattle producers in the general public. I recognize that there’s a certain type of person that answers surveys, but it is still one of these things that we.

01:38:26
Speaker 1: Want to be able to do.

01:38:27
Speaker 3: You answer surveys, Yeah, yeah, it could be that could be the first question.

01:38:31
Speaker 4: But it is.

01:38:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it is something Yeah, yeah, it’s something that in the next couple of weeks that that’s something that we’re gonna put out to try to just see what people know, what people don’t know.

01:38:45
Speaker 1: Tell people what look for, like, yeah, all the woods, you’re out running around whatever, and then here you see a blank yeah.

01:38:52
Speaker 3: So and so some of that is going to be challenging, right because if you if you see a dead animal and you see maggots, you’ll see that right, like that’s just gonna happen, and with a decomposing animal, and so some of it is just a matter of if you see that, that’s something that you should be reporting. A dead animal with magots, a dead animal with maggots. So you saw it’s just this morning reported dead hole in a tree exactly. Yeah, and so but again it’s it’s one of these things that it will be especially important if in win screworm kits here, but it is going to be kind of a early reporting thing as well. So depending on the state that you’re in. I had, oh yeah, in New Mexico at all of our extension offices. I know Arizona’s doing a similar thing. We have these collection kits that people can request or get and pretty much what it comes with is a set of tweezers. It comes with a vial that has seventy percent ethanol in it, and then it comes with a QR code and it pretty much says collect maggots from these different locations and then essentially you can then submit it to the New Mexico Department of rom Live stuff, no from and from dead things as well. I think that it’s one of these things that we’re looking more for a living animal that has things in it. But for hunters, you know, you’re not going to get them.

01:40:13
Speaker 5: You just harvested deer, Yeah, and you immediately look it over right, exactly well, and that’s and that’s really where you know, I’m trying to communicate is, yeah, you’re going to be looking at animals in a way that the rest of us aren’t.

01:40:25
Speaker 3: Right, And and again we’re especially in southern New Mexico where you know, we have a number of those exotics and everything like that. It’s going to be something that people are handling those animals because they’ve harvested them to look them over, look for maggots, anything like that. And so obviously if you were to come across an animal and it’s just skull and bones in the you know, am I saying that you should collect maggots. Probably not, but it also wouldn’t hurt you know, part of the New Mexico Department of Bag and you know ag agencies in general across the country. Part of what they’re doing right now is processing samples if it’s adult flies, if it’s maggots, just to monitor, yeah, just to monitor.

01:41:06
Speaker 1: The wildlife agencies take interest. Yet is it mostly the egg commission?

01:41:09
Speaker 3: So it’s mostly the community. So in New Mexico, we Fish and Wildlife put out kind of a call. It was an email to anyone that drew a tag last year essentially saying, hey, be on the lookout for this. I don’t know of any other agencies that are currently doing that, though I think that it is a really great thing to kind of be able to do that. So like I got an email, A colleague of mine got an email, and I was like, oh, okay, actually they’re doing something. But that’s part of the challenge is because it is this whole other group that we don’t traditionally interface with, and so it’s getting those people involved. And the other challenge is that you know, every state has their own state response. Obviously it’s all governed by the USDA, but what Texas is doing, and what New Mexico is doing, and what Airs is doing, what California is doing, they’re all slightly different. And a lot of that has to do with kind of funding structures and where stuff like that is coming from and so and the way that people are developing things. And so again, my kind of call is is if you see something, say something in a lot of ways because I think that it’s it’s something that is going to be a concern. And if you’re concerned about the environment, you’re concerned about the health of wildlife, you know, that’s a big concern on that front.

01:42:31
Speaker 1: You know, we have a lot of conversations about mortality events with wildlife, and there’s this question of like is it a population level impact, Meaning someone might look and say lead ammunition can lead to some rapt or death because they’re ingesting fragments of lead from carcasses they scavenge or left by hunters. And someone might counter that by saying that happens, it’s not a population level impact. Or wind turbines, you know, on or bird species. It might be like, yes, for sure, but it’s not a population level impact. The same way you look and you’d say here, Like man, cars hit and kill a lot of deer right most every week you see a new dead deer somewhere around these neighborhoods that we’re in right now. Ye, but it’s not a population level impact in your opinion, Is it possible to have population level impacts on wildlife considering that it has that this stuff needs to be wounded?

01:43:31
Speaker 2: Yeah?

01:43:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, I.

01:43:34
Speaker 3: I couldn’t say, like truly, I think some of it what that really looks like. I think if it were to just run rampant, you potentially would see that. You know, I’m thinking about you know, like ORX in New Mexico or something like that. I could see a population level impact there, right Are you going to see that in.

01:43:52
Speaker 1: An area would have a thing that’s confined to a relatively small anyways and it’s not a huge population anyways.

01:43:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, or you know where we’re talking prong horned populations in New Mexico or anything like that.

01:44:00
Speaker 1: A good point in a reduced vulnerable population, a population level impact could be for adults.

01:44:08
Speaker 3: Correct, And so that’s where I think you’re going to see impacts. Do I think that it’s there’s going to be a population level impact to white tail deer.

01:44:16
Speaker 1: No, probably not, like it’s like it’s additive mortel for some populations like the key deer losing a handful of mature animals as a hit.

01:44:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so I think they lost one hundred and fifty deer or something like that, which is a huge number with what the population is. And so I I can’t speak to that from the that And I also don’t know if anyone has ever tried modeling it or anything like that. We say that it will have an impact on wildlife, but that’s the challenge, is that how do you actually you know, it hasn’t been here for like in being endemic for fifty plus years, and so what that looks like they were modeling, how they were doing any of that. It’s completely changed. And so yeah, I don’t know. I can’t definitively say, but some of these more vulnerable populations, I could imagine it being a concern and then that’s going to change, you know, tag allocation and anything else like that, and so it’s going to be a kind of concern overall.

01:45:24
Speaker 1: We mentioned getting on dogs and Mexico on dogs, is that mostly like are they seeing it on that’s just like feral dogs, street dogs.

01:45:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so much.

01:45:33
Speaker 1: Pets.

01:45:34
Speaker 3: No, so you’ll see it in.

01:45:35
Speaker 1: Pets as well. You might have your dog go home, be like what in the world?

01:45:39
Speaker 3: Correct, And so that’s actually something that currently whenever an animal is brought from a endemic zone in Mexico across the border, the animals are supposed to have a certified ved inspection and.

01:45:52
Speaker 1: That’s the things they would look for.

01:45:53
Speaker 3: And that’s one of the So that’s the reason that it currently exists for companion animals is so that screworm because scream coming across and and that you know, some people are very concerned about. That’s how scrowm would get here is because you know, we already.

01:46:08
Speaker 1: Have my buddy. Yeah, I don’t want to read them out. And the dog’s dead anyways, in the so long ago he he smuggled a Mexico dog home. Yeah, named it number seven and uh died long ago. Okay, Uh, but you know you wouldn’t be able to water board it out of me? Who did?

01:46:24
Speaker 2: Okay?

01:46:25
Speaker 4: What about uh? Wild hogs?

01:46:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, Texas, Yeah.

01:46:29
Speaker 4: A huge fear around so yeah around screw yeah.

01:46:35
Speaker 3: So that’s it, like hogs and well just just think about you know them, you know interacting wounding themselves or others, and then kind of what that’s going to do, and then the movement all exactly in so.

01:46:48
Speaker 4: Many Texas, like suburban urban areas.

01:46:51
Speaker 3: And it’s funny, you know when we’ve when I’ve been in strategy meetings about like, all right, well what happens because it’ll probably get to Texas first. It’s just that really exposed border and where the cases are, it’ll probably get into Texas first. And so we’re like, all right, it’s probably more of a concern for us to deal with, you know, screw them coming from Texas than it is from Mexico. And so we’re kind of thinking from that that eastern side of our state where we have a bunch of cattle productions are coming. Yeah, we have a we have a bunch of cattle production and there’s a huge wild hog problem there. And so we’re like, all right, this is a this is a place that we need to be able to monitor and kind of deal with when it comes to a lot of that is Yeah, So so wild hogs are are definitely a concern, and it’s kind of like, all right, well what do we do with them?

01:47:37
Speaker 4: Uh?

01:47:37
Speaker 3: Just you know, it’s our it’s already a problem just from their damage, let alone. From now they’re going to be carrying Screwroom around.

01:47:45
Speaker 1: M M. What do you got, Doug?

01:47:49
Speaker 2: I got a new band name. It’s called the New World screw Worms.

01:47:53
Speaker 1: That’s like heavy metal. It’s like, it’s like goar.

01:47:55
Speaker 2: And the album is called Problem of the Americas.

01:47:59
Speaker 1: I uh, good album like that? An I uh, I could see a band Problem with the Americas. Yeah, that’s what it wouldn’t be death metal. Oh yeah, screw is hardcore, hardcore death metal, like the kind of stuff you don’t you want your kids to listen to. That’s the kind of music screw Room makes.

01:48:24
Speaker 2: Beyond that, I I thought when I saw this.

01:48:28
Speaker 5: Title and started reading a little bit about it, I’m like, well, this ought to be interesting, and it’s been fascinating.

01:48:33
Speaker 1: You came down here thinking you wouldn’t be interested. I thought I had you come because I knew you’d be interested.

01:48:38
Speaker 5: Well, I didn’t know how interested I would be. The whole thing with cattle, I mean, i’ve you know, like you cut the antler, I’m sorry, the horns off. I just remember this blue coat was the blue stuff that would spray.

01:48:54
Speaker 1: Was a stockman. But retired.

01:48:56
Speaker 5: Yeah, but so you cut the horns off cows and then and you know, if you do it too or too late in the spring, then the flies get in there and then the mag But the maggots do a really great job of cleaning up all of the I it’s just all these weird things you saw life or death on the farm kind of stuff. And so those are all the images that were going through my head. And yeah, I think I have had everything else answered.

01:49:24
Speaker 2: Doug.

01:49:24
Speaker 1: You you’re going on to speaking, you have some speaking engagements coming up. Where’re gonna discuss screw?

01:49:30
Speaker 2: Well? I would try to. I’ll tell you what I’m gonna try to work in.

01:49:37
Speaker 4: Repertoire.

01:49:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, where are you gonna speak?

01:49:39
Speaker 5: I’m doing some fun stuff. I will be at peasant Fest as I have been for the last several years, and talking on the Habitat stage about working with the Fish and Wildlife Service on a on a project and in our on our farm. And I’m also talking in the Path to the Upland stage about making a contribution to conservation and building a conservation resume. The other couple of talks are really, you know, kind of fun. One of them is all of the county conservationists in the state come together for a convention every year and then they bring in all these other people and I’m going to be the keynote speaker. They’re talking about working with landowners to move conservation forward. And then in Northern Illinois a forestry association sort of the same idea that if we’re going to do anything on a landscape level, we really need to involve private landowners and a great way to do that is through sharing the land and getting things done on private property like burns and that sort of stuff where you need a lot of people for a short period of time. That’s one of the things that we’re going to be talking about there, is getting people involved with conservation on private land.

01:50:57
Speaker 1: Do you have a way if people want to check in, if people want to track the activities of Bubbly Doug, where do they go to find out where you’re going to be Someone wants to come.

01:51:06
Speaker 2: Meet you or hear you Sharing land dot com.

01:51:10
Speaker 1: And you’ll have an events calendar.

01:51:12
Speaker 5: Yeah, there’s an events calendar there. And and then on my website, Doug Duran dot com, there’s an events calendar there too. You can follow me on Instagram and you know, ignore the stuff that you don’t want to read about, and pay attention to.

01:51:26
Speaker 1: Pay attention to the stuff that you do, you know, and then where do people what’s the best resource people that want to read up on screwworm.

01:51:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I guess a couple of things that the USDA and APHIS have done a really good job at kind of putting out a lot of really good resources kind of over time. And so if you just you know, Google, uh, screwerm, you’ll end up finding some different some different resources there if you’re kind of interested in what’s going on in New Mexico specifically or in kind of some of these southern states. So you can go to my website, hovered.

01:52:04
Speaker 1: Lab dot com. Yeah, how’d you wrought up with a lab named after you? Yeah?

01:52:08
Speaker 3: So, well that’s my last name.

01:52:10
Speaker 1: I got to so you founded the lab? Yes, because we have a guy on like Monteith he has he has his lab they called the Monteethe Shop. But yeah, like, yeah, he’s a researcher that has his own shot.

01:52:21
Speaker 3: I will say that I’m just not creative, and so it was one of those things of it.

01:52:25
Speaker 1: But you founded I don’t mean how’d you want? I mean why is named that? But you came in Yeah, yeah, so you came in and founded yeah, like an entomology lab. Correct.

01:52:33
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:52:33
Speaker 3: So I got hired as an assistant professor at New Mexico State, and so part of my job is I’m seventy five percent research, and so with that was starting a lab to do different different projects. And so, you know, we do everything from scorpions Arizona bark scorpions to cockroaches to you know, we’ll probably do some kissing bug work. We do a lot of house fly stuff. We’re doing a bunch of screm stuff as well.

01:52:57
Speaker 1: How many grad students are floating in and around.

01:52:59
Speaker 3: Your Yeah, so so currently I’ve only been here a couple of months, and so I have my first uh student that’s going to be starting here in about a year, but she’s an excellent undergrad. I have a technician. I have a couple of undergrad so it’s five or six of us. We’re kind of expanding out currently. I will say that that’s one thing that’s fascinating is running a lab. If anyone hasn’t talked about this, it’s it’s more like a business than I ever thought, because it’s finding the money to pay these people. It’s supervising them. It’s kind of coming up with all that stuff. And so yeah, and so I got I got hired to kind of do a lot of just cool work and then screw Room kind of popped up and it’s like, all right, that’s where I’m gonna shift my focus at least for the time being. And so yeah, so Hubbard Lab dot com. On Instagram, it’s NMSU Urban Entomology.

01:53:49
Speaker 1: You put in nasty, you put up nasty disease photos on there.

01:53:52
Speaker 3: So so we’re kind of we’re we’re in that building stage currently where we’re you know, I we’re just gonna be talking about some of the projects and I but I think over time we probably will just kind of informational stuff about storm or or anything like that. And and so yeah, I will say though, if you’re looking for specific information, you know, on what is directly going on. USDA kind of updates it on on cases that are currently going on. They keep it up to date weekly. APHIS does. And so there’s a number of decent resources that I can provide some of the links and stuff like that if that’s something that people want. I guess two of the other things that I would say though, is one the biggest thing that people can do is share this information, right, you know. I I’ve been asked like, all right, how can we prepare, how can we do anything like that? Just like anything, it’s getting the information out there, because that’s the that’s the biggest thing, you know, South.

01:54:48
Speaker 1: Texas, correct, Southern New Mexico, southern Arizona, Presumealy, southern sorry, californ Yeah.

01:54:54
Speaker 3: And and so that’s that’s going to be one of these things. But it’s important for everybody to know. You know, we we had imported cases in Maryland and a human you know, and so it’s a uh yeah, and so that was that was a case. You’ll you can look at the news headlines. It was maybe October or something like that. There’s a guy that came back from an endemic country that had screw them like in his arm or something like that. Yes, it’s great, man, but again it’s a it’s a concern, and so it’s not just something that we should be focused in in southern New Mexico or or South Texas. And so getting that information out there hit the Florida keys, yeah and and again yeah, and and there may be I heard some rumbling that they actually figured it out. I from what I knew, they had never figured out exactly where it came from or how the incursion occurred, because it is it’s kind of strange, just like popped up in the Florida Keys and then we didn’t see it anywhere else. But it’s just one of these things of getting out there, you know, talking. You know, we all elected a bunch of people, right, you know, and you know it’s great you you had our senator in a couple of weeks ago, and I really enjoyed kind of listening to his philosophy when it comes to, you know, the outdoors and conservation and everything like that. But I think that it’s important to communicate with our elected officials and tell them, hey, this isn’t something that is just a concern for this group of people, or it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind because it’s down in Mexico, you know. We you know, there’s a saying that like parasites don’t have borders, right, like they’re just gonna hop right across, and so we need to be able to do that. And so communicating with your elected officials, even if it’s not finding funding to fund some of the research or anything else like that. It’s just saying, hey, this is something that’s important to me or could be important. Yeah, And so I think that that’s kind of the the big takeaways on finding information communicating that kind of overall. I guess two other things I guess I would say is, you know, if you want to support kind of our ongoing work, you can. You can donate on my website to kind of our efforts. If it’s urban entomology, if it’s screw worm, if it’s anything like that, or there’s just you know, there’s it doesn’t have to be me, there are lots of other people that are trying to do.

01:57:12
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:57:14
Speaker 3: What it comes down to is, you know we’re trying to especially in New Mexico, I will say, is that we’re kind of you know, grassroots effort on trying to get out communicate. We don’t have the backing like a state like Texas does. And that’s something for me is that I don’t want New Mexico to be left behind. And it in a lot of ways is just kind of like that that ug least sub child, right, And so I want to be able to advocate for the state and be able to put out as much good information and as much good research as any of the other you know, well funded and kind of backed states, you know, Texas and California. And so that’s why I’m out spending my time communicating this because it’s it’s something that I may not be from New Mexico, but I call myself a New Mexican at this point. And so yes, I recognized I started the podcast by talking about, you know, New Mexico not being grated a lot of things. But my whole goal is to make sure that we we are prepared as we possibly can. And then the last thing is is that I do want to hear from people on their what their knowledge of screw them, how concerned they are. Because one thing that we want to be able to do is develop educational material, and you know, material that will resonate with people, if it’s producers, if it’s hunters, if it’s the general public. And we can’t get that without feedback and so get early detection exactly, and because that’s going to be that that’s going to be the biggest thing is to buy in, right, we need to get people to buy in. And if it’s cattle, producers. Well, we need to get cattle producers to report it. Cattle prices are super high, is a cattle producer are going to want to say, hey, I have this thing and they can’t move their animals, you know, And so that’s where getting hunters involved, you know, explaining to cattle producers, hey, this is this. We recognize that, you know a lot of people have echoes of the way that the most recent pandemic was kind of handled. And you can have your own opinions on how that was handled, but that’s not the goal here is to kind of it. It is to control it and then let’s get back to normal. And there’s a lot of I think learning that can be taken from how we handled COVID. And I know that the government is kind of taking you know, the government doesn’t do a good job at taking opinions. But I will say from the meetings I’ve been and people are recognizing, hey, let’s not do what we did before if and when it gets here, and so let’s.

01:59:40
Speaker 1: Listen to people exactly and a diverse set of viewpoints.

01:59:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that’s where it comes down to getting that information from people of Hey, I want to know if you don’t care at all. You know, It’s like there are some people that aren’t concerned about CWD, right, and so with something like that, I want to hear from people and see where they’re concerned. Is because if I’m I’m employed and I paid by the taxpayers in New Mexico, so I am here to answer to them and to develop information for them.

02:00:08
Speaker 1: Overall. Yeah, Okay, Caleb Hubbard veterinarian entomologists, the first one we’ve ever had on the show. Maybe the last, maybe not because you did a bad jockey. Well, we’re gonna switch to a forensic entomologist from there.

02:00:24
Speaker 3: I will say. Jeff Do is kind of a combination of everything. He does forensics, he does in veterinary entomology.

02:00:30
Speaker 1: So not not the last. Yeah, potentially veteran. Yeah, it’s just we’ve been at it a long time. Yeah, we’ve only had one Unlos statistics man. Yeah, you know what I mean, what are the odds?

02:00:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know you had doctor Schmidt, you know, with the pain index and everything. Yeah, you had you had one another.

02:00:50
Speaker 1: You don’t know, No one knows if we didn’t talk about it. We also had a guest on who happens to be an aquatic entomologist, but he wasn’t there to talk about that, Okay, so let me read redo it. Doctor Caleb Hubbard one of many entomologists you have heard from and we’ll hear from on the Medeor podcast. Of that you can’t so many entomologists can’t keep them straight. From the Hubbard Entomology Lab at New Mexico State University and also the beautiful and lovely Doug Durrent. Thanks for joining me.