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Varmint Control builds Long-Range Shooting Skills - If you're Looking to Improve your Shooting Abilities, Helping Farmers and others out by Targeting Prairie Dogs fills the Bill. I frequently find myself dreaming about connecting with spectacularly long shots. Not like a solid 100-yard kill shot at a whitetail, mule deer or elk resting at the fork in a tree, but long, legendary shots that immediately become the fodder for modern lore. I’m talking about ridiculous “struggle to see with the naked eye” far at a target so small you struggle to keep it located in your optic. The shots you...

A pet prairie dog became a viral sensation for its carefree attitude after it was rescued from a house fire in Pennsylvania. Red Paw Emergency Relief Team shared photos of Vern the prairie dog, one of three "dogs" rescued after a fire broke out in Montgomery County. Vern captured the hearts of the group's Facebook followers with his relaxed facial expression as he lay next to one of his canine housemates with his belly exposed. Volunteers from Red Paw Emergency Relief Team joined emergency crews at the scene of the fire to help rescue the pets and ensure they had...

I want to use the prairie dog with the rocket launcher pic that I sometimes see on ZOT threads, but I can't seem to find it.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An estimated 87 people in the United States have caught monkeypox, mostly from infected pet prairie dogs, and about 20 have taken the smallpox vaccine to try to protect themselves, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday. CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said her agency and local health officials were investigating the response to the outbreak, which some have criticized as too slow. Monkeypox broke out in the U.S. Midwest in early May, but the CDC was not notified until June 4 and did not report it publicly until June 7. "I think...

CHICAGO -- State officials have tracked down all but two prairie dogs sold to Illinois buyers by a suburban Chicago business where the weeklong outbreak of monkeypox originated, an Agriculture Department spokesman said Friday. Spokesman Jeff Squibb said officials have located two of four Gambian giant rats -- the animal believed to have infected the prairie dogs with monkeypox -- sold within Illinois by the same business. He said they continue to search for the other two, which were given away by the buyer. In all, Squibb said officials have tracked down 19 of 21 prairie dogs sold within Illinois...

WASHINGTON, June 12 (UPI) -- The recent outbreak of monkeypox in the United States and the delay in alerting healthcare personnel to its spread highlights the need for a national communications system to alert physicians and public health officials rapidly about bioterrorist attacks or emerging diseases such as SARS and West Nile virus. Over the past several weeks, dozens of Americans might have been infected with monkeypox –- a close but less-deadly cousin of smallpox -- in its first outbreak in the Western Hemisphere. Doctors in Wisconsin saw the first patient May 22 when a 4-year-old girl developed a rash...

CHICAGO - Health officials investigating an outbreak of monkeypox that apparently spread from pet prairie dogs to people in three Midwestern states said Monday the number of possible cases has risen to at least 40. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported four confirmed human cases Monday of monkeypox, a smallpox-related virus that has never before appeared in the Western Hemisphere. Seven people have been hospitalized; no one has died. Steve Ostroff, deputy director of the CDC’s National Center for Infectious Diseases, said he expects the numbers to rise as human and animal samples are tested. But Ostroff said...

PRINT THIS STORY | E-MAIL THIS STORY U.S. bans prairie dog sale, trade Smallpox vaccine recommended to control spread of exotic disease By DANIEL YEE, Associated Press June 12, 2003 ATLANTA - The U.S. government banned the sale of prairie dogs, prohibited the importation of African rodents and recommended smallpox shots Wednesday for people exposed to monkeypox, the exotic African disease that has spread from pet prairie dogs to humans. The government's aggressive response to the disease came the same day that the federal investigation of the monkeypox outbreak was expanded to eight more states, including Tennessee, bringing the total...

For the first time in the United States, monkeypox may have spread from person-to-person. A southeastern Wisconsin health care worker may have contracted monkeypox from a human patient, state epidemiologist Jeff Davis said. MONKEYPOX Afraid Of Monkeypox? Fact Sheet CDC Info. WHO Info. Guidelines For Vets, Pet Owners Previously, U.S. patients with monkeypox contracted the disease from infected animals. Davis declined to identify the health care worker or where the worker was located. He said health officials and scientists haven't confirmed the presence of the monkeypox virus in the worker, but they suspect it and are still testing tissue specimens....

Tue Jun 10,10:46 AM ET Schyan Kautzer, 3, of Dorchester, Wis. shows her right index finger Monday June 9, 2003, where she was bitten by a pet prairie dog infected with monkeypox. Schyan Kautzer was the first case of the virus identified. The quarantine of the Kautzer home and five-acre hobby farm was ordered last Friday. (AP Photo/ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Mary Jo Walicki)

It's a new health threat that is setting off a major alarm. Dozens of cases of Monkeypox have been reported in three midwestern states. Health officials are investigating a suspected case of the virus in an eleven-year-old in New Jersey. Health investigators have also had their eye on Tennessee. As environments change and world travel and trade increase, germs once confined to animals often spread to human populations. The U-S cases of Monkeypox started when an infected rat passed on the disease to prairie dogs at an exotic pet store in Chicago. ...snip...The original source of the U-S invasion is...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. health authorities on Wednesday recommended smallpox vaccinations for anyone exposed to "monkeypox" either from infected pets or from the roughly 63 human cases, all but one in the U.S. Midwest. The U.S. government also banned the importation or trade of African rodents, including Gambian rats believed to be the original source of the smallpox-like illness previously unseen in the Western Hemisphere, said David Fleming, deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. "I'm confident that everything that can be done is being done to prevent the spread of this virus," Fleming told...

ATLANTA - The U.S. government banned the sale of prairie dogs, prohibited the importation of African rodents and recommended smallpox shots Wednesday for people exposed to monkeypox, the exotic African disease that has spread from pet prairie dogs to humans. The smallpox vaccine can prevent monkeypox up to two weeks after exposure to the virus, but is most effective in the first four days. "We're optimistic we can deliver the vaccine to these people in time to do good," said Dr. David Fleming, deputy director for Public Health and Science at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news -...

Monkeypox cases 'will go up' June 11, 2003 BY DAN ROZEK, Staff Reporter As more suspected human cases of monkeypox virus were reported in Illinois, state officials said Tuesday they've found only about half of the estimated 130 prairie dogs sold by the Villa Park dealer whose animals may be linked to the nation's first outbreak of the rare African disease. And the illness, which had been limited to Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana, may have turned up in a new state as New Jersey health officials said an 11-year-old boy there apparently has been sickened by the virus. But the...

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- New Jersey health officials were awaiting test results Tuesday to determine if a child from the state is infected with monkeypox. The 11-year-old boy came into contact with a pair of prairie dogs while visiting a family friend in a Midwestern state where the infection has spread, state officials said. Results on blood and lesion samples from the boy sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are expected in several days. Nationally, health officials were working to contain the spread of the monkeypox virus, which is related to smallpox and apparently has never before...

As if SARS, mad cow and West Nile virus were not enough, Health Canada is advising public health officials to be on the lookout for monkeypox, a serious disease related to smallpox, which has made its first appearance in North America. No cases have been reported in Canada, but an advisory is being sent to medical officials and public health labs across the country about an "epidemic" in the U.S. and the need to watch for the disease, said Dr. Frank Plummer, head of Health Canada's national microbiology laboratory in Winnipeg. Thirty-seven people in the U.S. Midwest are believed to...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The monkeypox outbreak illustrates a growing problem: Exotic animals give exotic diseases to people who get too close, a trend that some medical specialists call a serious public health threat. Such diseases can become a threat not just to the people who buy and sell exotic pets, but to the general public if they spread to native animals and become established in the United States. Federal health officials are working frantically to ensure doesn't happen with monkeypox. "This is a harbinger of things to come," warns Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota, who advises the government...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Officials in three states tried on Monday to track down pet prairie dogs believed spreading "monkeypox," a smallpox-like illness not seen before in the Western Hemisphere that may have infected 37 people. Only six of the victims were being treated in hospitals, officials said, and they were expected to recover with bed rest. The disease, caused by monkeypox virus, is not believed to spread person-to-person. But in light of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome scare and an approaching summer season when mosquito-borne West Nile virus was likely to again pose a deadly threat, health officials were moving...

Monkeypox Virus Spreads Across Upper Midwest Officials Warn Public To Avoid Ill Prairie Dogs POSTED: 10:09 a.m. EDT June 9, 2003 Tests have confirmed that the disease that has sickened pet prairie dogs and numerous humans is the monkeypox virus. MONKEYPOX CDC Info.WHO Info.Guidelines For Vets, Pet Owners And it's spreading across the upper Midwest, causing an outbreak of rashes, fevers and chills in people. Experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the prairie dogs likely were infected by a giant Gambian rat at a suburban Chicago pet distributor. Health officials have confirmed that four Wisconsin people...

Monkeypox virus underscores danger of having exotic pets Two new cases of illness confirmed By MARILYNN MARCHIONE and SARAH CARR mmarchione@journalsentinel.com Last Updated: June 8, 2003 The human monkeypox outbreak, likely spread by prairie dogs via imported African rats, is the latest example of a danger that health officials have warned of for years: Exotic pets often bring exotic health threats. Deadly infections, unusual injuries and people getting bored with or overwhelmed by owning such pets and releasing them into the wild have been reported, health and agriculture officials say. Importing super-exotic pets into the United States, such as Gambian...