They would bulldoze all the mesquite on huge tracts of land into one huge central pile, station semiauto shotgun shooters with loaders around the pile (with controlled fields of fire) -- and set fire to the pile.
They asked citizens to help, so, after the drive-ins closed and Carlsbad rolled up the sidewalks, four of us young men would pile into one car and head for the alfalfa fields along the Pecos River south of town. Each of us had a spotlight and a .22 pistol, and we'd drive out into the fields, stop, and wait a few minutes. On command, we'd switch on the spotlights -- and the jackrabbits would all sit up on their hindquarters.
The field would look like green carpet -- dotted with short, white posts with black tops! (JRs have black ear tips...) And then, we'd open fire -- and the JRs would hit their bellies and start crawling.
Then the field would look like green carpet -- with a bunch of "wakes from invisible boats" moving across it. So -- we'd each aim at the head of a "wake"...
There's a strange fact about jackrabbit neurology: when hit in the head by a '22 bullet, a jackrabbit will invariably leap about three feet straight up -- and do a perfect backflip! Hence, the fields looked like green carpet -- with a jackrabbit exploding upward every few seconds...
Apparently, we helped the bubonic plague program somewhat, because on about the third night we'd visit a field, the "white posts" were few and far between...
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BIG drawback: when four people are shooting out of a car, each of them has his head near another shooter's muzzle. Sometimes we'd be almost back in town before we could hear to carry on a conversation. And, now, over sixty years later -- my ears are still ringing... :-{
But, I never heard of a human case of plague in NM... :-)
TXnMA
