FAMILY PETS USUALLY BECOME close to being members of their owners’ families. When pets’ lives end, they are grieved by the families that loved them. But an early demise caused by a New World Screwworm (NWS) laying eggs in an open sore or wound would add to the agony of a beloved pet’s passing. Learning about NWS and closely monitoring pets could help avoid that tragedy. (Photo by John Jefferson)

by John Jefferson

Got a dog or cat?

If you do, this column is for you …and them.

I don’t have a cat — just two dogs. They wake up planning how to enhance their positions in the family pecking order. But we don’t spoil our dogs! Of course not.

About 40 years ago, I was offered a new Labrador puppy as a fee for photographing a friend’s recent litter of registered pups. He had seen a picture I had taken of two golden retriever puppies on the cover of a Ducks Unlimited publication. 

Recently married and trying to make financial ends meet, I thanked him for the offer but said that I usually endorsed a saying I heard another small business owner use: “In God we trust; all others pay cash.”

He laughed and agreed that was a good rule.

We made an appointment and showed up with camera, a flash attachment, a backdrop, and props –like a duck decoy, and a couple of shotgun shells.

On the way to their beautiful home in a semi-wooded area, we reaffirmed our decision of not wanting to share our backyard with a little poop factory.

All went as usual when photographing puppies: We had fun and enjoyed their antics without losing our patience. Surprisingly, I even got good pictures! As I was packing up, I heard my wife utter, “Ooo-awe!” I looked up and saw her cuddling a puppy that was trying to lick her chin. So much for not sharing our backyard! 

In the forty years since, we have been trained by six doggies and sold or traded 30 puppies. But parting with four of the adult “family members” devastated us. However, we were enriched by having shared life and yard and home with them.

I began this year publishing the first column about the New World Screwworm (NWS) having been confirmed in Mexican cattle. The Texas Animal Health Commission was helpful in sounding the alarm. I included a brief history of the horror screwworms inflicted on Texas’ agriculture and wildlife in the fifties and sixties — damages amounting to over two billion dollars in Texas, alone! Images of a deer with half its face eaten off by screwworm maggots are unforgettable. And a hellish way for any animal to die. 

Six months after I wrote that first newspaper column about it, Congress, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the Farm Bureau, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Texas Department of Agriculture, Texas Wildlife Association and Texas Governor Abbott have all joined in the battle to prevent a reprise of that terrible episode in Texas history.

Some Texas newspapers – like the Wilson County News in Floresville – have carried articles by the above-named sources about the danger of this plague and what to do about it. 

But many readers seem unaffected. They don’t own cows or hunt deer. But you know what they do have?

It’s cats and dogs! Their pets. As warm-blooded animals, an open sore makes them vulnerable. That incudes humans, too.

Think about That!

JJ