West Nile, MN

Dave Neitzel’s view of the dog-eat-dog, mosquito-suck-bird world begins from his third-floor office in the faceless Minnesota Department of Health building, which sits quietly on the University of Minnesota’s East Bank campus. Neitzel is an ornithologist and entomologist who works on vector-borne and zoonotic diseases. He’s an expert on the West Nile virus.

It turns out the virus had a fairly innocuous arrival here in Minnesota last year. Slowly making its way across the state, it sent a few horses to Elysian Fields and several hundred birds went talons-up. But there were relatively few human infections.

“Fortunately, there were no West Nile virus deaths here in Minnesota,” remarked Neitzel. He said there were 48 cases, most of which resulted in not much more than a hat-stretching headache. Sixteen were more serious cases of meningitis and encephalitis, but no one died. On the wall behind him was a big state map with the 2002 West Nile data on it. I pointed to it and asked, “Any big surprise from last year’s Tote Board?”

“Yeah, there was,” he explained. “About three-quarters of our human cases were out in western or central Minnesota, and only a quarter of the cases were in the seven-county metropolitan area. That’s different than in the East, where most cases occurred in urban areas.” Down in Illinois, they had almost 900 cases—and most were right in Chicago.

It turns out that the mosquito that carries the virus is different here than down there. “Once you get west of the Mississippi River, the main bird-feeding mosquito becomes Culex tarsalis, a much more rural mosquito that develops in plains and semi-open country,” he explained. “We have some of those bugs that get into the metro, but mostly they’re out farther west.” I suppose they hate the traffic and vote Republican like everyone else.

This summer the Department of Health is asking Minnesotans to report any birds they believe may have died under what they call on their web site “unusual circumstances.” Now, short of flying kamikaze into the picture window, I wonder whether the public knows what the usual circumstances of avian death might be. “Right, it was kind of hard to word that,” Neitzel chuckled. “We certainly appreciate the help from the public—this surveillance is public-driven. But there has to be an understanding that we can’t test every bird. I had one guy in particular who was very mad because we didn’t pick up a crow he had seen on the side of Highway 394. And I tried to explain that was a bird that was most likely hit by a vehicle, and he said, ‘Well, it may have been sick and unable to avoid the vehicle…’” Neitzel trailed off, sensing the ridiculousness of the conversation all over again. But he was just getting warmed up.

“We had one person request that we test a mosquito they had found.” Neitzel laughed. “Another guy wanted information on Chronic Waste Nile Disease.”—Craig Bowron