For almost two decades I have tried to understand how I became so ill in an area in BC where Lyme disease was not supposed to be because there were no deer to maintain a deer tick population.

In 1985 my dog and I became ill while prospecting for gold in north central BC. In 1987 I read about Lyme disease in an issue of Scientific America. I was fortunate to be tested at the Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Montana for tick-bite infection where I tested more positive for B. hermsi than I did for B. burgdorferi. It took years for me to understand what this meant as I was suffering from the symptoms of LD. Dr. Banerjee from our provincial lab confirmed the Montana testing and found Lyme disease in rabbit ticks. I pulled engorged ticks from a mouse and had them properly identified as Haemaphysalis leporispalustrus. I now suspected that LD could come into the cabin where I was living, the mouse cycle was very high in 1985. I also learned that Ornithodoros hermsii was known to frequent old log cabins. I assumed they would feed off a mouse or an engorged tick that had dropped off a mouse. I was bit at night on my upper lip under my mustache, a likely attachment site as O. hermsi is attracted by carbon dioxide.

I now understood how my dog and myself might have been infected with Lyme but there were pieces of the puzzle that were not consistent with the description of LD. There were others with the symptoms of LD that had passed away and I have a lesion on my lip where the tick attached that will not heal despite years of antibiotics. I have always suspected that a viral component was somehow connected to my disease. In addition, the snowshoe hare and porcupine populations were severely impacted in the area where people became ill. In the past couple of years the hare populations appear to be making a slow comeback.

On December 27, 2003 I realized that West Nile Virus might explain the missing pieces of this puzzle.

From my research I have not yet found anybody who knows if or how WNV will affect the bunnies and what disease they can pass to their ticks. It is not known how the birds and carnivores that feed on the bunnies after a die-off will be affected.

If WNV were to make an appearance in an area of high hare population and it killed the bunnies no one would notice because they are at the high point of their ten year cycle and were going to die off anyway. When they find dead birds or carnivores that have been infected by a mosquito or from eating dead hares, WNV will go to the forefront and once again Lyme will be ignored or not discovered.

Re assortment of the WNV DNA in the snowshoe hare needs to be studied. It appears that it is not as simple as the bunnies getting WNV and then passing it back to us via their ticks. Snowshoe hares have not been given the needed recognition as a threat to man as their tick is said to be host specific and rarely bites man. We should not forget that these hares could suffer from a variety of infectious diseases, viral, (snowshoe hare virus) and bacterial, (tularemia). The lynx is a cat whose favorite food is the snowshoe hare = Bartonella?. If their ticks should lose their natural host to disease they will attach to mice, migratory birds and what else? There is a possibility that Ixodes dentatus will be found in areas of high hare populations.

We need to try to corroborate the above, I am only aware of two other die-offs of rabbits and there was no mention of people becoming ill in either. One was on San Juan Island in the 70's and 80's but is thought to have been caused by the plague. I have not had an answer to my queries on this one. The other was at the Beagle Club's training grounds in Allegheny County, PA, I have kept in touch with the researcher and at this time the die-offs do not appear to be related.

Persons who were living in rabbit habitat in remote communities in the 70's and 80's will have the best chance of recognizing this disease. Dr. Charles Crist, MD has stated that Lyme borreliosis can cause any symptom and any disease, adding in West Nile Virus and snowshoe hare diseases would make a very interesting disease. I would like to make it very clear here that these symptoms are what I believe I saw and should not be taken as the gospel truth. Unlike Lyme disease this disease has a high mortality rate. I believe the disease changes or mutates as it passes through different hosts and or vectors, the closer to the source, the sicker you can get. This disease can cause aneurysms; sometimes leading to stroke. The disease can cause infections; some of which may become malignant. In my humble opinion this is a disease that can be diagnosed as multiple sclerosis and is sometimes fatal. This disease can cause unexplained suicides, impaired vision and can be complicated by pneumonia. A late stage complication imitates a form of dementia.

I wrote this down because we have areas in BC with a healthy snowshoe hare population and WNV is forecast to make an appearance this year. If what I saw is repeated, there are persons who are going to be needlessly crippled and some will die. No one will realize that a treatable disease is causing part of the problem. This is why we have to find if there are other areas where this has happened.

I do not want to be labeled an alarmist, I saw what I saw and am tired of living alone with these suspicions. I sincerely hope that I am proven wrong.