Fort Collins – Most people probably wouldn’t complain if rodents suddenly went missing from their homes, but the disappearing act worried a small-mammal researcher.
Dean Biggins, who studies plague for the U.S. Geological Survey in Fort Collins, reports that the absence of wood rats that normally build nests in and around his home is a sign that plague has spiked in the area.
“Those are the kinds of things that you have to go on in terms of plague in any given year,” Biggins said. “It seems anecdotal, but there’s no large-scale effort in the West to document plague on a systematic basis.”
Biggins said the disease might have caused widespread die-offs in some rodent populations.
Some experts said they think the increase in plague could be the result of increased rodent populations in the past couple of years, which makes it easier for the disease to spread.
