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Heh... midday update...

Day started with a sad note from ecurbh, he thought he saw one of our calico feral kitties dead on the road behind the house, so I went out to check, and to take her off the road if it was.

Well it wasn’t one of ours, it was a dead possum, but it was pretty obliterated by then so it was a little hard to tell! :~[

Well, I decided as long as I was there, I’d scrape it off the road, and I’d brought my manure fork to do that. So I scraped it off and tossed it in the bushes on the side.

Then I started thinking I’d just gotten possum blood and guts on my fork and what if it was an EPM carrier? I shovel stalls with it and sometimes even rake hay with it.

Phooey, so I start googling to find out if there is much of an EPM risk in this area, which I didn’t find, and whether it would live on my manure fork. And if it would? What would kill it? I start trying to google what might kill it and disinfect the fork, and I can’t find that either. I couldn’t find anything I needed to know!

So I end up calling the Animal Disease Center at WSU Vet school, and they transfer me to a vet there and I warn him that I was about to ask a silly question, told him about the possum and the pitchfork and asked him if I should clean it or toss it, or stop worrying about it.

He said “Don’t toss it, you might hurt somebody!” ;~)

He said it was a good question (he’s nice) and that I should soak it in a bucket with some bleach. He also said EPM is not real common but good to be concerned.