It got my attention right away. There in the paper was a photo of a beached whale, and not one of your smaller ones, and the headline below it was “Deschutes County reports bubonic plague case.” My first thought: maybe it’s just the one case, but it looks like it could be a whopper. Seems to me you can fit a lot of contagion in a whale. Then I wondered how the whale came in contact with an infected flea, because that’s the textbook strategy for the bacterium in question to replicate itself, in the absence of medieval Europeans. Do whales get fleas? And how would they scratch?
Second thought: wait just a minute. Deschutes County is completely landlocked and nowhere near the ocean. A whale beached in Deschutes County is probably an even more unusual story than a bubonic plague event. Did the newspaper bury the lede?
Thought Three: plague strikes me as plural. The whole point of a plague is to lay waste to a population. Bubonic plague, a.k.a. Black Death, is a splendid example. Half the people in the world died. Having one case of a plague is like offering someone a kudo. There’s no such thing as a Plague Of Locust. How can one person get a plague? That’s a story with no traction.
I spent a few minutes trying to figure out if a whale could have gotten stranded swimming upstream into Central Oregon—Columbia River and hang a right at the Deschutes, is what I came up with, but wouldn’t someone notice? Any good salmon fisherman would notice a 65-foot creature thumping up the river, even ten beers in. Then it occurred to me that I might be dealing with a layout problem in the newspaper, and sure enough, just below the bubonic plague story was a story about a stranded whale. Evidently the whale photo was considerably more compelling than a photo of a wretchedly ill cat, which is what was implicated in the plague case. Still, it seems to me that the whale story could have been presented first, below the photo.
So yes. There was a bubonic plague case reported in central Oregon entirely unrelated to a whale. In fact, the human involved, who has been successfully treated by medicine unavailable to medieval Europeans or much of the modern right wing, was likely infected by his pet. The signs of bubonic plague include fever, chills and weakness, as well as abdominal pain, shock and, oh, bleeding into the skin and blackened fingers, toes or nose. The signs in the cat would include a serious case of hunkering, accompanied by a loss of interest in slashing passers-by for no reason. But that could be a lot of things. It is a testament to medical personnel that they were able to recognize the rare affliction.
Our current Oregonian bubonic plague victim is doing well, but such was not the case with a previous Central Oregonian who, in 2012, lost his fingers and toes after contracting the plague from his pet cat. His cat was choking on a rodent and our hero intervened on its behalf. Anyone would do it. You wouldn’t watch your cat dying in front of you and think: Shit, no. I could get the Black Death from that, but I can always get another cat.
Clearly there’s a lot to be said for not letting your cat outside even if you hate birds and your neighbors. True, a terrorist mouse could breach your defenses inside, but your chances of losing your toes are much higher if you merely send your pet out to poop in someone else’s tomato bed and torture wildlife.
I have no idea if Central Oregonians are especially vulnerable to the Black Death. But as long as we remain free of pythons and alligators, and the climate discourages episodes of gratuitous public nudity, the Florida Man’s status is likely to remain unchallenged.
Thank you for “lede”!
C
Spend too much time with editors.
Prairie dog colonies are susceptible to sylvatic plague (which is bubonic in humans) which isn’t native to America. Those poor critters lost most of their habitat and now they have to deal with human-imported diseases.
It’s enough to make you want to crawl into a hole.
Okay. I am NOT into cats. I’m off Next Door because of the cat lobby. PERMANENTLY. This seems rather severe.But the cat lobby is strong. I’ll explain at another time, if anyone is interested.
I haven’t got a doubt in the world!
I grew up in Central Oregon, specifically Bend, long ago. So long that the population was less than a 10th of what it is now. Then, we were vulnerable to new ideas, the 1950’s were still enforced, and a few of us were starting to wonder about this new English group on Ed Sullivan, and that stuff we’d heard about a plant that made for a fun party.
I rather like the effect the plague, the bacterium Yersinia pestis. When it came to Europe, on the limbs of fleas hitching a ride in blankets and rugs from around Mongolia, it caused one of the largest redistribution of property and therefore wealth, know to have happened. Italy particularly, lost nearly a third of it’s population in those years, and that left a lot of those grand villa’s open to first comers.
Plus, it inspired a catchy children’s song that has lasted for hundreds of years.
Anyway, nice post, Murr.
I don’t have a whale in this fight, but this is interesting: https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2014/07/ring-around-the-rosie-metafolklore-rhyme-and-reason/
Yes, I’ve read similar critiques, and I think they are probably true…that is, it’s unclear the origins, and the popular one, the one I referenced obliquely, likely not correct. Yet, it makes for a good story, yes?
Yes, and we’re all about good stories here! Although everything I write you can take straight to the bank.
Plus it also led to massacres of Jews, the accusation being that Jews had poisoned the wells and that was the cause of the Black Death. So I don’t “rather like the effect of the plague.”
If Christian Heaven exists but there’s nobody in it, is it still up there?
Do you mean that nobody qualified for admission?
Correct.
Well, now I’m glad my cat lives inside and probably wouldn’t recognise or chase a mouse even if one tap danced in front of her.
My old cat (Saint) Larry recognized mice in the house but she never once caught one unless it was running around inside the dishwasher for a minute, and even then they usually got away.
Joining the “thank you for lede” crowd!
Well you’re welcome! I am not sure what I’m being thanked for exactly but you’re welcome.
You’re being thanked for using it correctly! It’s appalling how often “lead” is used instead. I often see it mistranslated in closed-captioning, but I’m absolutely positive it’s being misused in print on a much larger scale.
C
Ah! Thank you! As it happens, I use a lot of words correctly, even the ones I make up.
All this talk about “lede” made my brain go down a rabbit hole and start obsessing on em space and en space, and trying to remember why and when I learned about them…..https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/127427/what-are-the-function-of-em-and-en-spaces
Sorry, I’ll have to contemplate bubonic whales after I pull my brain out of this tailspin…
Just rise to the surface, breach, and blow it out your blowhole!
Central Oregon is home to jackrabbits which pass Bubonic Plague around like a joint at a be-in.