{"id":25610,"date":"2014-08-05T05:56:31","date_gmt":"2014-08-05T11:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=25610"},"modified":"2014-08-05T10:32:32","modified_gmt":"2014-08-05T16:32:32","slug":"rabbits-ticks-and-family-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/08\/05\/rabbits-ticks-and-family-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Rabbits, Ticks And Family History"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rabbits, both wild and domestic,\u00a0are notorious for heavy tick infestations and the cottontails and jackrabbits on Antelope Island share that miserable fate.<\/p>\n

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\"rabbit<\/p>\n

It isn’t unusual\u00a0for me to see rabbits with many ticks, especially on their ears.\u00a0 I photographed this one two years ago near the hay barn on the island.\u00a0 The ears of rabbits, with less protective hair than the rest of the body, seem to be where most of the obvious ticks congregate.\u00a0 Some rabbits seem (visually at least) to be completely free of them while others are obviously\u00a0heavily infested.<\/p>\n

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\"rabbit<\/p>\n

This one is from earlier this summer, also on the island.\u00a0 The backs and inside of its ears also had ticks.<\/p>\n

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Whenever I see one of these poor tick-infested rabbits I think of my great-great grandparents.\u00a0 I hope you’ll indulge me in a little family history as I\u00a0explain why.<\/p>\n

In the “old west” many early pioneers became seriously ill\u00a0soon after they reached the foothills of\u00a0the Rocky Mountains.\u00a0\u00a0They thought the mysterious illness was caused by the combination of\u00a0hot days and\u00a0cold nights\u00a0in the mountains so they called\u00a0it \u00a0“mountain fever”.\u00a0 The incidence of illness\u00a0was high – in some wagon trains as high as 50%.\u00a0 Some died but\u00a0most did not, though they were extremely ill with wide-ranging symptoms such as chills, muscle and joint pain, headache, deep pain behind the eyes, lumbar back pain, nausea and vomiting.<\/p>\n

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\"oliver<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0Image courtesy of Daughters of Utah Pioneers<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

My great-great grandparents, Oliver and Mary Ann Dudley were early Mormon pioneers who crossed the plains in wagons\u00a0from Winter Quarters, Nebraska (near present-day Omaha) to\u00a0Utah Territory\u00a0in 1850.\u00a0 During the trip both Oliver and Mary Ann became extremely ill with mountain fever\u00a0so there were no adults to drive the wagon\u00a0and their 15 year old daughter (also named Mary Ann) drove that wagon more than half way across the plains and mountains as her disabled parents rode in the back.\u00a0 I often think of what that experience must have been like for all of them.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the research of Jay A. Aldous from the\u00a0University of Utah (and a few others) we\u00a0know that “mountain fever” was what we now call Colorado Tick Fever, a disease caused by a virus transmitted by the Rocky Mountain Wood Tick (Cemacenter andersoni<\/em>).\u00a0 The pioneers rarely rode in their wagons because of the extra load on their animals (besides, those wagons had no springs and it was a jarring experience to ride in one) so everyone walked almost the entire trip.\u00a0 And once they reached the foothills of the Rockies they were largely walking through sagebrush where huge numbers of ticks laid in ambush.\u00a0 In a letter to a friend in 1848 Thomas Bullock wrote (original\u00a0spelling and punctuation\u00a0used):<\/p>\n