Public Health Awareness: A Fox Parasite.

Remember This: Parasites are like computer hackers. They get in, get what they want and really work you over before they are done. Some you can treat; others stay like family come to visit that don't know how to leave.

After roaming the woods, working in an animal hospital and the extreme sport of getting myself into trouble, my doctor is treating me now with medication directed at would be interlopers into my system. I wondered after years of beating my head into the brick wall of medicine,  given my previous animal related history, no one listened? Finally, someone did and he's a pretty smart MD. I bring this up to merely remind you not to scare you.

I got to thinking,  as a stab at public awareness for all those that hunt, to spotlight a nasty bugger.

Enter Echinoccoccus multilocularis.

Personal story #1:

Two different clients came to the office I was employed at. The first client exhibited a sickly cat. Out of it fell this thick fleshed, white tightly segmented parasite. For all intents and purposes,  looked like a monster tapeworm. It was placed in a red-topped blood tube with formalin and placed in the refrigerator. At this time, the veterinarian who saw this in the litter pan,  stepped back and looked like he had smelled the worst pile of manure ever dropped out an animal. "That is a fox tapeworm." By his actions, I determined this was like nuclear waste. A massive cleaning in the spirit of OCD proportions was carried out by staff.  We didn't want that parasite. Said parasite was shipped off to the State laboratory for testing and confirmed as a fox parasite.

Second client came in with a dog and a stool sample in a clear plastic bag with a UFO (unidentified fecal object). The same reaction followed of intensive cleaning. We were happy that both animals did not get a chance to defecate on our lawn, thereby transmitting this little gremlin.

Hopefully no one got infected through cross contamination.

I got to thinking about all the times I have seen people dressing out animals. Some rupture the gut through misplaced shots, the dogs ripping the animal (fox) open, or pick through a carcass, found dead or scraped off the road for that night's dinner. Let's face it,  there are people with morbid curiosity and ghoulish ways when crossing the path of a situation where they may not get the chance again, will poke around into the unknown, contrary to personal harm. We all do it. Reminded me of Chunk of Goonies fame when he yells to Mikey, "Dead things, Mikey. Dead things!"

These same hunters/huntresses will half-heartedly wipe their faces while dressing out to scratch an unconscious itch, remove sweat, or finger around in the body cavity. This unconscious action moves closer and closer to the eyes and the mouth, which are oral entry ways for parasites and disease. I don't even want to go there thinking about bloody fingers and someone eating uncooked meat, safe or not. It's human nature, I guess.

On the other hand, lets consider those hunters that keep scat collections. Hopefully,  you had someone put that literal crap in a autoclave after it petrified to kill whatever was in it or at least a plastic container lined with 60 cc syringes and filled minutely with Formalin and closed for several days. (Trust me on this. Make sure you get someone to test a sample to see if you left it in long enough.)
Otherwise every time you handle the scat you are at risk,  if you're not already repeatedly infecting yourself. 

If the Fox defecates on the ground, then a wild boar comes rooting through, there you go: up the ole pie hole.  Now the wild boar has it. At another time and incident, you could have a person walking through the woods eating off the land: berries, dandelions, and root tubers. Oooops. Infestation. On another occasion, you could have a family pet playing with their food and eating a rat. Gotcha again, then the cat uses the litter pan, which you clean. I can't recall Haz-mat suits being sold at Wal-mart because a lot of time the OB-GYN will only tell you about Trichomonas possibly infecting pregnant women. Another scenario is the hunter picking up scat for closer inspection while saying, "It looks like fox crap to me."

Think of all the ways this could come visit you at your door.

Personal Story #2:

Had a co-worker come down sick at the animal hospital. We will call her June.  June went to her doctor only to find that she had this case of Pseudomonas which had lodged itself in her sinus. 

June was a poor example of washing her hands and she was always snotting and wiping her nose. After coming back from her doctor with a confirmation, she thought to test all her animals. She had 3-4 horses, ~5 dogs, and a house cat. All of them were positive. All were administered a medicinal regime including Old June. June couldn't take time off because of the demands of her boss and job. She had to come to work sick, potentially infecting us all, and wearing a Picc line, which is a peripheral inserted central catheter that fed her medicine. It was like someone walking around pushing an IV pole except she could hide it on her person. This was what I called 'extreme fucking over of your employee'. I hated it for June; her personal problems aside. I was also considering the erroneous attitude the doctor had at bullying June into potentially infecting the other patients, clients, and staff. She touched everything. In the above personal story June was no longer with us.

Personal story 3#:
A well meaning citizen brought in a sick red fox. When I got to work, the other worker applied an intravenous catheter while medicating and giving fluids to this sick fox. I walked in and thought, "Oh Shit. Tapeworms/rabies? Take your pick." The doctor finally showed up and found out about the fox.  He directed them to euthanize it. While declaring stupidity among those few that had done such works, the doctor himself did not feel the need to have the head tested by DHEC, which is done at no cost as a public service.  This service caters to any animal found to be suspicious of carrying the Rabies disease.

Here I report,  Veterinary medicine is filled with true professionals, given the quality of the practice. Which at times is not perfect,  but then there are places that make you question the belief in God, the Anti-Christ and the fact someone in Psychology missed their calling to study the mentality of people working in this particular field.


Here you have two incidences, where you could have contamination or infestation. Think about it. This is just examples that can happen at a job. Imagine if you are at leisure.

My understanding it is worse in Europe but researchers cry foul with lack of money, so who knows for sure at any given place just how prevalent things are.

As an example, I jumped in the Scientific Time Machine and visited a poster presentation written in 2008 entitled, Wild life surveillance on Echinococcus multilocularis in Sweden, written by Birgitta Andersson, Bodil Christensson, Susanne Johasson, Eva O Lind, and Göran  Zakrisson.

Here is the link:
www.actavetscand.com/content/pdf/1751-0147-52-S1-S10.pdf

There are several good examples of information here:

http://www.actavetscand.com/search/results?terms=Echinococcus%20multilocularis

Here this poster is saying the Swedish government is paying for investigations into the existence of this parasite.

The facts:

2007

• 245 red foxes shot by local hunters from different parts of Sweden. (Potential contamination/infestation). These harvests are not done in a localized area.
• Carcasses are placed in -80 degrees Celsius/week before sampling using coproantigen ELISA testing.
• 48 positive Fox and 28 additional specimens randomly selected were examined by sedimentation technique.

Results:

• 48 Foxes out of 245 were positive for Echinococcus sp. by the coproantigen Elisa.
• The Sedimentation technique was negative. (Using both positive and randomly selected individuals).

When ever a sedimentation procedure was done in our office we used fresh feces. Older feces is not embraced because parasites have an odd way of migrating into soil around the area where the feces is deposited. You could think of dropping a stone in water. Once the stone hits the water there is an outward wake. This wake is equal to the migration of parasites larvae from the feces. That could go for some distance and it's hard to kill them even with burning, depending on what parasite, nematode, or X factor you have.

When I was reading this, I saw where the sedimentation was not positive. That might have something to do with treatment of the carcass. What is in the bowel may die versus the samples needed for the ELISA, which is two different procedural tests. Sedimentation studies also depend on solute to solution percent and if they are mixed properly or you would have non-flotation or rupture of the eggs.

At this point, you can agree, always be careful with what you are handling.

Ways to avoid:

• Research and Read. Libraries give out library cards at low rates with free computer access.
• Don't touch it.  Cat's only have nine lives. You may not be a cat.
• Learn how to wash your hands like a professional.
• Get a professional to remove the carcass for testing or removal.
• In the South, people would  put gas on it and strike a match to watch the pretty colors of the flames.
• Wash all your fruit, vegetables, and berries.
• Don't eat and browse in the woods because it looks clean and not infested. Your eyes are not electron microscopes or even 50X microscopes. Birds poop from the sky all the time; a statue can vouch for that.
• Buy surgical gloves or dish washing gloves. Use these when cleaning litter pans, dog poop, or gardening. (I have known clients to wash their cat pan right in their house sink and put the cat pan on the counter where their dinner is displayed. I can confirm: I don't eat anything they cook or stay long.)
• Take your prized pet/hunting dog to the Veterinarian for a yearly, semi-yearly check, vaccinations, diagnostic tests, and deworming/treatment.
• Go to the doctor when you show signs or feel you may have picked up a parasite. Don't wait for it to breed in your entrails like the Alien baby, to burst out your chest or float by in your eyeball juices (i. e. loa loa).
• Educate yourself.

Now when you read your hunting dog a bed time story before you go to bed at night ask yourself this:    

Have I done enough to keep my prized hunting dog parasite free?
Have I took precautions to keep myself parasite free?

Always be on guard and don't touch that shit.


~Courtesy of the AOFH~

Google these links for further reading :

(read on page 295-298:)
http://books.google.com/books?id=g_tBWVBevM0C&pg=PA297&lpg=PA297&dq=fecal+sedimentation+techniques&source=bl&ots=V6OeSumg5v&sig=k_PhiFKYVHkEHDrl9ZtMeGYYJwE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=fSxRUdm6MIfi0gHe-YC4DQ&ved=0CDwQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=fecal%20sedimentation%20techniques&f=false

http://www.mabtech.com/Main/Page.asp?PageId=26

http://www.biobest.co.uk/diagnostics/techniques/elisa-how-does-the-test-work.html

Interesting links to Scientific Research and General facts:

http://www.actavetscand.com/content/52/S1/S10
http://www.thefoxwebsite.org/disease/diseaserisks.html

The Mystery of Missouri Mooswa, Disappearances of the Twig Eater.

Remember this: In mysteries there is always a pattern, if not a pattern, a subtle nuance that almost goes undetected if not for the astute investigator; otherwise you are screwed Sherlock. Besides its fun to play Nancy Drew sometimes.

 

First off let me say I was a little disappointed by the lack thereof literature on moose physiology, function, body systems such as digestion and its deviations due to disease, reproduction, and environmental factors, etc. Maybe I wasn't looking in the right places? I felt like I was walking through a horrible moose Sahara where the moose was in the witness protection program. What does the moose have to hide?

Missouri knew that the moose population was declining but since last year it was a drastic 35 % which caused them to wake up on that I guess. Some days I swear these states are trying to ruin hunting to some degree by screwing around until things look dire or is it just me?

I recently came across an article (everywhere on the internet) that stated the moose in Missouri were disappearing. It was a great dumbfounding mystery. I soon read the general consensus was climate warming, ticks, and the unknown were to blame.

In response to this mystery the state of Missouri has decided to shell out 1.2 million dollars to start an investigation. I wanted to inspect this situation much closer to see what I could surmise. Believe it or not this is probably not the first time this kind of behavior or result has happened to the moose. Referencing data from previous scientific inquests can help build a case as to why. Even if it is pure assumption on my part why can’t I play the investigator in what is now Moose Forensics 101? It’s not going to hurt anything. I did see it mentioned that this was not an applicable CSI case because of what I guessed to be the helplessness of smart people to solve a moose death problem. I bet that made a lot of important people feel more than inadequate. I argue that point because there is mystery, dead bodies with DNR chalk lines and no explanations. For fun I decide what a huntress might be thinking if she were trying to play Nancy Drew under a tree in a boreal forest while hunting moose and googling on her cell phone to find the same animal she is after may not be there in the woods. Going on what we know about moose let us look at the known evidence be it fractured.The only thing that sticks out is more than one moose dying in the same place. Whether this is at the same time I do not know.

 

Building the Case Part 1: The Evidence.

Evidence #1:

Diet: Moose are ruminants that eat a variety of plant material. Their diet consists of wood foliage, aquatic plants, lichen, grasses, and roots.

Here I would like to say that lichen, fungi, and algae are present in the hindgut of a moose. The moose eats bark. Lichen occupy bark in large numbers if the light is favorable along with other conditions. Lichen is made of algae and fungi. The moose is eating bark because the moose needs the lichen that is growing on the tree? The algae, fungi, and protozoa perform many functions in the hindgut. Sometimes it’s the little things that are crucial. If this staple is missing in bulk from the moose diet there may be problems with digestion or even absorption/production of Vitamin K and Vitamin B. This is one of the limited articles I found on ruminant digestion.

http://physrev.physiology.org/content/78/2/393.full

Personal story: Had a client once that came in with a sick dog who had eaten rat poison. It was mostly too late to make the dog vomit then administer activated charcoal but upon inspection and the fact she didn’t really know when the dog ate the rat poison we tested the pack cell volume to find the dog was anemic. We ensued a blood transfusion with a subsequent treatment of Vitamin K. (I say this because if a moose in Missouri can have 50,000 ticks sucking it dry, be infected with a tick-borne disease have anemia and show some data that its Vitamin K levels are low then I would say ~let’s consider it in the name of scientific investigation). Besides the more parasites you have the more nutrition is lost.

Personal story: Once saw a cat almost suck dry by a flea infestation. I itched for two weeks.

Evidence #2:

Physiology: Moose have a four compartment stomach consisting of the rumen, omasum, abomasum, and the reticulum. Being foregut fermenters, the moose forces the regurgitated food back up from the stomach into the mouth so they can chew for up to seven hours to digest properly. Moose have bacteria in their gut that helps absorb these nutrients and synthesize essential amino acids, vitamin B, Vitamin K, and volatile fatty acids. These bacteria produce acetic acid, propionic acid, and butyric acid from the cellulose of plant material that are broken down into energy. In my reading ruminants completely depend upon the microbial flora present in the rumen or hindgut for cellulose digestion. The rumen contains various bacteria, protozoa, yeast and fungi. Ruminants produce large amounts of saliva that help with fermentation and act as a buffering agent. Fermentation from these processes produces organic acids and maintains the pH of the rumen fluids.

I was reading on the Moose in Minnesota website that there is a known trend for moose to move from one location to another because I go by their phraseology, “In the 1980’s moose began appearing in the Pembina Hills area of northeast North Dakota, and expanded to the south. In the early years of the 2000’s moose began appearing further west and further south.” There was also the note of warmer temperatures having some influence on mortality rates but there was a discrepancy in the fluctuation of temperature from one location to another.

 

There was a previous GPS collar project from 2000-2007 performed by the University of North Dakota led by Rick Sweitzer and James Maskey.  The dissertation done by Maskey was not moving. I wouldn’t suggest bothering to read it. This project admitted the moose were recently colonizing the area which implied movement yet again. They ruled out river flukes but there was a mention of brainworm. This brainworm is a small parasitic nematode that infects ungulates. Its choice host is the white tail deer that doesn’t suffer from the brainworm but other species do that involve neurologic damage that lead to death which is affectionately known as “moose sickness”.

The Canadian biologist Roy Anderson identified brainworms in 1963. The brainworm female lays eggs in the blood vessels and venous sinuses and subdural space of the white tail deer’s brain. Here is the difference in non-deer ungulates. The adult worm does not produce eggs and the animal become ill. This makes the moose an aberrant host. The way the moose could get infected is the white-tail deer, after gestating the brainworm larvae and its subsequent infection into slugs and snails could be eaten by the moose where the food is retained for up to seven hours in mastication marathon. The brainworm has plenty of time to migrate to brain parts unknown before defecation occurs.

I was also reading an article entitled, Maple Syrup, Moose and the Local Impacts of Climate Change points out climate yet again. In this article it stated that climate change was causing milder winters which in turn lead to better foraging in places reduced snow pack would usually cover making pathogens and pests.  Of course there was the point in this article of doing long term studies for real-life complexities. It was bizarre that moose were found in maple syrup production problems. That would be a concern if the brainworm is able to reproduce itself faster due to the availability of ground cover so it can continue its life cycle during mild winters where foraging is not hindered. I wondered what the likely suspects were:

Building the Case Part 1: The Suspects.

Suspect #1:

Climate: If the moose is use to a colder climate and had problem with thermoregulation in warmer climate I could see where this would bother it but would it kill the moose just on its own? (I am thinking pig here because they don’t do well in hot weather unless they have mud). It’s got something to do with pigs not being able to sweat.

I suspected climate change was an initiator of a series of biological events based around food, parasites, disease, weather, stress, migration, poison, DNA disturbance/interference.

 

Suspect #2:

Parasite: Here we have the brainworm that the moose gets from the White-tail deer/slug/snail hosts. Could this infection and subsequent inability to help the brainworm thrive cause the moose to die via illness?

There is also the tick to be considered. Ticks during the summer usually pick a spot in wooded areas where they go through their life cycle. If it’s warm enough there is a tick explosion where offspring might fall on you like a sky diver or as you walk through grass or brush jump on you. Once on and attached they have all kinds of cooties they can transmit to you that cause arthritis like symptoms, flu-like symptoms, malaise, and sometimes death. I mention cows here because Moose inhabit areas with cows and white-tail deer that have been known to transfer disease.

There is also Setaria spp. which is a filaroid nematoide that lives in cattle inside of the abdominal cavity. It has a microfilaria stage where the parasite swims around in the blood. The Mosquito is the bug of choice to transmit the disease by taking a blood meal from a cow. (This is so like heartworms in a dog.)These parasites migrate to the head and mouthparts of a cow. Upon necropsy the worms are found in the peritoneal cavity. These are supposed to be nonpathogenic parasites but if it looks guilty be suspicious. I have seen a ball of migrating or dying worms block up the heart and digestive track pretty much killing the animal.

Suspect #3:

Hunting: This is not the case it would seem but it would pose the question if the State of Missouri already knew there was a problem with its moose why did they not freeze the hunting season a while ago? Was it monetarily based because they already knew moose numbers were limited and people wanting the meat would take the chance at losing money on a wild goose (moose) chase?

Suspect #4:

Predation: This was also ruled out. Why? Because the State of Missouri already knew moose numbers were down. Low food might cause the predators to migrate away to find better prey. Also Missouri is no fan to wolves. Unless Missouri is going to put a great big fence up to keep the immigrant wolves out I don’t think they can stop them from migrating back in unless they have Wolf Border Patrol. Lions? Coyotes?

Nope. The powers that be decided they didn’t think predation was the culprit but I am not ruling them out just yet.

Suspect #5:

Spontaneous abortion: This could be due to disease in the infected mother. Spontaneous abortions have been known in deer, caribou, and elk when they are menaced to great levels by humans and predators. Brucellosis has been known to spontaneously abort Elk calves.

Suspect #6:

Sterility: When you have low numbers of moose living in one area that are not migrating out the gene pool becomes smaller which make the moose ripe for disease to take advantage of their systems because they have not developed disease resistance strategies through natural selection.

Personal story: This reminds me of the commentary on early Americans meeting the Spaniards. They didn’t know what smallpox was or STD but one hand shake and well placed rug killed a whole lot of people.

Suspect #7:

Migration: Maybe the moose decided things sucked in Missouri and walked over to North Dakota? It could happen!

Suspect #8

Disease: Here we could list all the disease of the tick from Lyme disease, Erhlichia, Spotted Rocky Mountain Fever, etc.

Personal story: I worked as an office manager for a mixed animal practice for ten years. This Rottweiler breeder came in with a litter of three month old puppies. The veterinarian orders some tests but the breeder was too cheap to get the needed ones. It was proven the Parvo virus was not in the puppies. The breeder ordered all pups to be euthanized because he didn’t pay for failure. The veterinarian lied (very illegal practice for one to do but he got away with it) and kept one pup alive which he wasn’t supposed to do. He then after treating the pup for free turned the pup over to the breeder who immediately had it euthanized by another doctor because he was afraid of spreading something to his other litters. Per another veterinarian checking additional pups they found out it was nothing more than E. coli because the guy had treated lumber for kennel flooring. He wasn’t properly cleaning or disinfecting the wood so the pups made themselves sick from unsanitary conditions. All it would have took was better communication and looking at the environment instead of just the symptoms.

There is also the worry of Bovine Tuberculosis but a necropsy of lung tissue could rule that out. This disease was also being spread as published in a research article in Veterinary Medicine International Vol. 2011 entitled, Preventing the establishment of a Wildlife Disease Reservoir: A Case Study of Bovine Tuberculosis in Wild Deer in Minnesota, USA by M. Carstensen and M. W. DonCarlos (what a name?!)

The way this was discovered was a beef cow at slaughter in Wisconsin had thoracic lesions upon processing. It was traced back to a herd in Minnesota where more of the cows were positive. A deer 1 mile away was collected then tested only to find it was positive too. The powers that be decided the deer got infected by spillover from the infected cattle. I did glean that a total of 9.783 deer from surveillance methods were tested in northwest Minnesota for bTB and yielded 27 infected deer. These lesions would be exhibited on the ribcage, lungs, diaphragm, or lymph nodes. Once again if the moose is sensitive maybe its symptoms aren’t the same? If this isn’t the guilty party at least you got an education on Bovine TB. It’s real and it’s out there like Mad Cow. The only problem with conditions like these is sometimes you don’t really get to find out where Pathogen Zero comes from or who germinates it first. Moose are like big cows but not really quite the same. Just look at it. It’s the alien of the ruminant family.

Suspect #9

Invasive species: The Foxtail (Setaria) Species. I would think either eating it or someone trying to poison it out of cattle grass whereby the Moose eats it second hand. That might account for multiple moose in one area dying. Contamination of foodstuffs or poisoned by nefarious weeds/plants. I wonder at this because most animals kind of know what to avoid but when you’re hungry a moose could be like that guy living in the bus on the movie, Into the Wild. He dies from dysentery after eating the forbidden berries.

S. Faberii has spread through parts of North America. It would seem that low temperatures keep the seed dormant but once those temperatures change the seed may begin to grow prematurely in these unstable climate times. I wonder what a forest fire would do to that if the temperature were high enough.

Suspect #10

Startling: Scaring Female Moose into abandoning young.

Suspect #11:

Drowning: Self-Explanatory.

Suspect #12:

Agriculture: Farmers using Monsanto corn or products that have been engineered to kill or ward off pest/insects. Once again what if the GMO’ness of the corn or its altered DNA does not agree with the DNA or even the four compartmental stomachs of the moose? This could literally be poisoning the moose.

Personal Story: My mother recounts back in the day when people actually got away with knife fights, farmers used agricultural soda. If a farmer put it out on grass to make it grow, he would be required to keep the cows off until there was a rain storm to wash it in the ground. She noted there were several deaths upon licking at such ground treatments. We know people still stock pile that kind of crap.

Suspect #13:

Human Development: Pretty much this causes habitat loss, startling, and fluctuations in moose economies.

Suspect #14:

Nutritional Stress: See Digestion. I also would note here that White-tail deer do eat birds. Birds are known to be reservoir for all kinds of nasty things from West Nile to Salmonella. What if a moose started eating birds? Or something else when it couldn’t find something else or was just bored?

Suspect #15

Monsanto corn or other GMO crops: It could happen.

Suspect #16:

Reproduction rates for non-sterile moose: There might not be enough females to breed to and have calves.

Suspect #17:

Moose Calf Mortality: I have found published papers from the Alaskan Department of Wildlife entitled, Unusual Moose Morbidity and Mortality in Alaska where in 2005 a study indicated that calves were indeed dying from bacterial peritonitis and septicemia. Whether the calves got this from a tick borne disease or virus (bacterial or otherwise) remains to be seen. A lot of them got eaten by bears during calving but there was note of lethargic periods before becoming recumbent the dying due to extreme cold temperatures.

Suspect #18:

Industry: Factory waste sites active and abandoned; fracking, or mining activities that cause second hand pollution and stress.

Suspect #19:

Lack of consistent predation: This is pretty straight forward stuff. If you don’t have the right amount of predators to pick off the sickly, odd or just bad DNA donors then poor specimens might be walking around in the form of what appears to be healthy moose. Natural selection did not get the chance to do its magic because of some unknown interference that allowed a Bad Bull or Female Cow to breed, have babies then pass on bad genes.

Suspect #20:

Bigfoot: Hey Bigfoot could have run them to death like hunter tribes did back in Africa. The only problem is before Bigfoot got a chance to gnaw off a piece humans showed up pointing fingers while yelling, “Look! It’s a dead moose. What happened?” I laugh at this because Matt Moneymaker and BoBo would probably theorize this is a possibility. I still love the show thought.

Suspect #21:

Aliens *hahaah*I had to it was funny. The mother ship has been coming to steal our food source.

 

After some limited research and what I know about the world at large on animals this is what I feel constitutes Angelia’s unofficial synopsis of Moose Death in Minnesota theory:

 

Due to climate changes, the moose who is problematic with thermoregulation and stress suffers from a lowered immune system.

This immune system once faced with lack of necessary food sources like lichen from trees that harbor alga and fungi for hind gut process of digestion inhibits the necessary processes of digestion. Anemia caused by entering tick hotspots with subsequent tick-borne infections and carriage of essential molecules by moose blood cells would lower the threshold of the immune system also. Malabsorption of nutrition that provides Vitamin B as an energy source and Vitamin K for blood coagulation and metabolic pathways which occur in the hindgut could render the animal lethargic. Climate changes also make the conditions right for the life cycle of the brainworm which needs warmer temperatures to cycle through to settle in the moose brain where it isn’t well received due to not being able to reproduce eggs which compounds the already lowered immune system. Given that there were several moose carcasses in the same area the idea not to rule out something in the environment that could have contaminated or poisoned the moose should be considered. (Excluding vehicle collisions, predators, and hunting.) Rubbing off hair due to parasites should be considered but whether or not it’s a chemical or other contaminates should be ruled out. There is always the “unknown”.

With that being said if anyone would like to add to the list of suspects feel free to let me know and I'll add them.
The moose need our help.

~Courtesy of the AOFH~