Family Quarantined With Monkeypox

When a young family of three brought home two $95 prairie dogs from a Mother's Day event, they never guessed the furry little additions to their five-acre hobby farm could confine them to their home.

But that's just where Tammy Kautzer is biding her time with her husband and 3-year-old daughter, quarantined after coming down with a suspected case of monkeypox, a virus linked to the burrowing rodents.

"They said we can't leave until the scabs fall off the sores," said Kautzer, 28, of nearby Dorchester in central Wisconsin. "I only have a few more scabs to fall off. My daughter's are gone."

Health officials were working to contain the spread of the monkeypox virus, which is related to smallpox and apparently never before found in the Western Hemisphere. It was first documented in 1972 in Africa.

The disease in humans is not usually fatal but causes rashes, fevers, chills and sores.

In all, 37 cases of monkeypox are either suspected or have been confirmed in three Midwest states. In Wisconsin, 16 cases are suspected and three were confirmed; health officials have not identified who the confirmed cases are.

Thirteen cases are suspected in Indiana. And in Illinois, there are four suspected and one confirmed case.

Investigators say a shipment of prairie dogs likely was infected with the virus by a giant Gambian rat, which is indigenous to Africa, at a Chicago-area pet distributor, Phil's Pocket Pets. Federal and state health officials were trying to track down 115 customers — both individuals and pet stores — that bought animals since April 15 from the business.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could not say how many people or animals may have come in contact with the virus.

The distributor, Phillip Moberley, said Monday that he voluntarily quarantined his home-based business and has destroyed 70 prairie dogs. A 24-year-old employee of Moberley's was Illinois' confirmed monkeypox case.

In Wisconsin, state officials had accounted for two-thirds of the 30 prairie dogs shipped to the state and issued two more quarantines barring people from moving mammals on their property to help stem the spread. Health officials also issued an emergency order banning the sale, importation and display of prairie dogs.

Eileen Whitmarsh, who fell ill after handling an infected prairie dog at her suburban Milwaukee pet store, said at first one of the animals just seemed fatigued. But then the symptoms spread to another prairie dog in the store.

"Nobody knew. Everybody thought, 'Oh, just a prairie dog not feeling well,'" Whitmarsh said.

Kautzer said she bought her two 6- to 8-week-old prairie dogs at a Mother's Day event in Wausau for $95 apiece. Two days later, the eyes of one crusted over and swelled up.

"I figured it had a cold," she said Monday in a telephone interview from her home. By then, she said, the animal had bitten her daughter on the finger.

Kautzer eventually took the animal to a veterinarian, who diagnosed a swollen lymph node. Then her daughter began running a 103-degree fever — and the prairie dog died May 20.

"I just threw it in the garbage. I didn't think nothing of it," Kautzer said.

That day, she took her daughter to a doctor and mentioned the bite. "That started a scare, especially since they found it had died," she said.

Health professionals had her retrieve the animal's body for testing.

By May 22, her daughter was admitted to a hospital; the child began feeling better by the fourth day.

Doctors didn't know what they were dealing with, Dr. John Melski, a Marshfield (Wis.) Clinic dermatologist, told the Wausau Daily Herald. They considered everything from herpes to anthrax.

Biopsies of the mother's lesions and a lymph node from the prairie dog were compared, and matched.

"One of the most important things for any physician to learn is to know what you don't know," Melski said. "When you don't know things, you keep working."

The quarantine of the Kautzer home and five-acre hobby farm was ordered last Friday.

The second prairie dog — named Chuckles — also got sick but is recovering and is being kept in a pet carrier, she said. Health officials will decide his fate.

"Why get rid of it because it caught something like we caught something? It is not its fault that it caught it from a rat," Kautzer said.