[Tax-chick]

According to the best recent research, the Black Death of the 14th century arrived in the human population through a Mongolian species of marmots, known as "tarabagan." In the United States today, the disease is sometimes found in wild populations of mice or prairie dogs. It's endemic in rodents, but it's unusual for it to be transmitted to humans in a dangerous form.

[SoCal Pubbie]

Actually, there are theories that the Black Death may not have been just bubonic plaque, because some of the symptoms do not fit, and there are few rats in some of the areas where the pandemic struck, such as Iceland. Other candidates are pulmonary anthrax and some Ebola like virus.

[coydog]

Heh, they call prairie dogs "plague bunnies".

[festus]

In Albuquerque NM I was at a park trail on the outskirts. There I saw a warning sign that said to aavoid rodents and the like as they sometimes carried the bubonic plauge.

I always figured that wasn't unique to Albuquerque and must be common across the southwest.

[Calvin Locke]

I surfed upon a Discovery show on survival. It was in some sort of US desert canyon. The host set traps of
flat stones hoping to get something, which turned out to be some type of prairie dog, iirc.

"You want to cook it thoroughly since they do carry bubonic plague..."