Bring Out Your Dead! (AKA: Protecting public health)

When most people hear the word "plague," they immediately picture medieval Europe, wooden carts, and plague doctors in bird masks. It feels like an ancient historical artifact. The plague is still very much active today. Yersinia pestis (the bacterium that causes plague) has been quietly circulating in the wildlife of the American West for decades.

A recent announcement from the New Mexico Department of Health: a wild rodent in Santa Fe County officially tested positive for plague. It’s the county’s first confirmed wild animal case of the year, following four domestic dog cases and a tragic, fatal human case in the state earlier this summer. There are a number of plague cases every year in the US. And it might start getting worse.

But it does underscore a massive truth about our industry: Rodent control isn't just about protecting property or keeping pantries clean—it is a vital pillar of modern public health.

Here is the breakdown of how this system works, what’s happening in 2026, and how troubleshooting environmental factors keeps these ancient threats at bay.

The Vector Chain: It’s Not Just the Rodents

While rodents get top billing in the news, they are only half of the equation. Plague is primarily a vector-borne disease, meaning it relies on a middleman to jump from wildlife to humans.

• The Cycle: The bacteria circulate naturally among wild rodents like ground squirrels, woodrats, and prairie dogs. Especially the prairie dogs.

• The Vector: Fleas feed on these rodents. When a rodent dies from the infection, its body cools, and those hungry, infected fleas immediately jump ship looking for their next warm meal.

• The Interface: This is where humans and domestic pets come into the crosshairs. If a dog or cat roams near wild animal burrows or contacts an infected rodent, they come in contact with those infected fleas.

  
  

From a pest control perspective, keeping properties safe from vector-borne risks requires managing the zones where wild animal habitats intersect with human structures. Disease transmission risks spike when the boundaries between "the wild" and "the backyard" get blurred.

It gets more complicated because pest control is typically focused on a single property. What happens when that homeowner goes on a hike or to a park or their neighbor's summer party or anywhere that isn’t their property? They can certainly come into contact with rodents and fleas.

I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but too often, structural pest management gets treated like an environmental and health catastrophe. Terms like “poison” and “endangerment” (to wildlife) and others are thrown around like tossing a piece of rubbish in the bin. Like any tool that is not used responsibly, sure, issues can happen; like driving a car irresponsibly and injuring someone.

Whether it's managing hantavirus risks in a commercial warehouse or tracking flea vectors near residential perimeters, a professional pest management program looks at the biology, the vectors, and the environment simultaneously. We can't eliminate a bacterium that lives in wild animal reservoirs, but we can build a bulletproof barrier between those reservoirs and the public.

Right now, some states have severely restricted the use of rodenticides and other states and localities are trying to do the same. In those areas (yeah, I’m talking about you California), rodent issues have drastically spiked. That’s close to prairie dog habitat and a quick hop, skip, and jump to commensal Before everyone starts yelling at me about IPM and rodenticides not being the only tool, yes, I agree. The protocol for mitigating wild vector risks remains consistent: sanitation, exclusion, trapping, monitoring, and other tools need to be used. Using professional pest control helps protect the environment (and people of course) by having the knowledge and experience to do things correctly and minimize any deleterious effects.

You can always have a professional (me) evaluate your current pest control plan and if you run a pest control company, you can always have someone (me) do training and help troubleshoot. That way everyone is protected and we don’t have to bring back the plague doctors. Or overwhelm our health care system.

Lagniappe - want to see what they did for the plague "back in the day" that didn't work? Of course you do.