# 6000
Since 6,000 posts is a bit of a milestone, I’d hoped for something really special to blog about; a major scientific discovery, or some breaking flu news perhaps.
Alas, this has been a fairly slow news morning, so I’ll settle for something unusual instead.
If you’ve noticed some snickering going on among disease geeks over the past 24 hours, it may be due to a dispatch from the CDC’s MMWR yesterday that describes a rather unique route of infection by Campylobacter jejuni in a couple of ranch workers in Montana.
First a link and excerpt (emphasis mine), then I’ll return with some `historical perspective’.
Notes from the Field: Campylobacter jejuni Infections Associated with Sheep Castration — Wyoming, 2011
Weekly
December 9, 2011 / 60(48);1654-1654On June 29, 2011, the Wyoming Department of Health was notified of two laboratory-confirmed cases of Campylobacter jejuni enteritis among persons working at a local sheep ranch. During June, two men had reported onset of symptoms compatible with campylobacteriosis. Both patients had diarrhea, and one also had abdominal cramps, fever, nausea, and vomiting. One patient was hospitalized for 1 day. Both patients recovered without sequelae.
During June, both patients had participated in a multiday event to castrate and dock tails of 1,600 lambs. Both men reported having used their teeth to castrate some of the lambs. Among the 12 persons who participated in the event, the patients are the only two known to have used their teeth to castrate lambs. During the multiday event, a few lambs reportedly had a mild diarrheal illness. Neither patient with laboratory-confirmed illness reported consumption of poultry or unpasteurized dairy products, which are common sources of exposure to C. jejuni (1). The patients resided in separate houses and did not share food or water; none of their contacts became ill.
Ahem. I’ll give you all a second to compose yourselves.
The practice of `dagging hoggets’ with one’s teeth, while not exactly sanitary (or palatable), is apparently one of long standing.
Errol Flynn, Hollywood’s swashbuckling leading man for more than two decades (1932-1959), grew up in Australia, and worked a variety of jobs as a young man.
One of them was at a sheep farm in the 1920s, and part of his job . . . you guessed it . . . was sheep castration.
The hard way.
Flynn delighted in relating the details of this procedure at fancy dinner parties and society functions once he had obtained fame and fortune, and included a graphic description in his autobiography My Wicked, Wicked Ways.
A quote from his book (warning, a bit graphic) follows:
“All I had to do was stick my face into this gruesome mess and bite off the young sheep's testicles. Dag a hogget. I had good teeth. I put my nose into this awful-smelling mess, my teeth solidly around the balls of the six-month-old sheep, and took a bite while I held him upside down. My nose was in fur and ordure. I bit and spat out the product into a pile of what they called prairie oysters. We have them in America too: delicious to eat, but not delicious to remove. They said this was the most sanitary way to de-ball a sheep. After I was done, I passed the sheep onto the next man, who put a little coal tar on the same spot for purposes of cleansing and closing up the wound.
The sheep never let out a bleat.”
Somehow, between E. coli infections, fecal implants, and now dagging hoggets, today’s AFD blogs have developed a bit of a theme.
Purely unintentional, I assure you. Sometimes you just have to go where the stories lead you.
Then you take a long, hot shower.
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