Pet King

If it were only a middle-aged and elderly women chatting about casual family affairs, Zhang Zian wouldn’t have bothered listening to them. How must he be to eavesdrop on others gossiping? However, the middle-aged woman mentioned later about the CDC, which caught his attention.

“CDC … Where is this?”

The old lady who spoke Cantonese fairly decently was bewildered. She may have been the type of immigrant who lived in China for the majority of her life while her children settled in the United States. She must’ve then joined them here to reunite with her family. Older immigrants like this were unable to change their lifestyles for most of their lives, so it’s unlikely that they would learn a new language.

But this was actually nothing. Even if someone didn’t know any English words, Chinatown could completely meet people’s needs. Whether it was food, every day, clothes, legal or illegal items, they could be found here. It was almost a country within a country. It was completely acceptable to live here as long as there was no need to drive.

Take this old lady, for instance. After immigrating to the United States, her lifestyle was no different from that in her home country. She spent 99% of her time in Chinatown shopping for food, cooking and playing mahjong, and watching Chinese TV programs. She ignored the English world outside of her lifestyle, treating it as if it didn’t exist. She didn’t care about the news of the outside world. As long as there was no global war going on, she would continue to live a peaceful life until she died.

She heard the word CDC and didn’t understand what it was.

“Grandma, you don’t know? CDC is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States. Some doctor who was interviewed on TV recently said that there is a disease spreading in deers across North America. The disease may be contagious! It is said that if you must eat venison, it should have been quarantined by regular channels,” the middle-aged woman explained with patience.

“Wow, is it that terrible? Is it like the bird flu?” The old lady was suspicious. She looked at the middle-aged woman and looked back at the venison, feeling a bit reluctant.

The middle-aged woman spoke Mandarin, and the old lady responded speaking Mandarin with a Cantonese slang.

“Excuse me, miss. I just accidentally overheard you talking, but what’s wrong with the deer? ”

Zhang Zian interjected, thickening his skin.

The middle-aged woman glanced at him and saw that he did not look like a suspicious character wanted by the Homeland Security Bureau, nor did he look like an employee despite being Chinese. Thus, she looked kindly at him and replied, “I don’t remember the specific name. You can find out what it is called online. It’s something like wasting disease or thirsty disease.”

“Oh, thank you,” He thanked her and stepped back to the corner to show that he was no longer listening to the conversation between the two.

The middle-aged women continue to persuade the old lady not to buy the venison.

“Thirsty disease” didn’t sound right, so he took out his phone and searched for “wasting disease + deer”.

It was hard to see or know, but once it was found, it appeared shocking at first glance.

Since when did this disease begin spreading throughout North America?

A while ago, he was busy. Regardless if it was a trip to Egypt, pests, or stray dogs in the back, he didn’t have the time and leisure to follow the news on the other side of the ocean. After all, he only had 24 hours a day and couldn’t possibly follow news from so many places.

He searched for relevant reports and simply skimmed through them. After all, he was still in a butcher shop with people coming and going. After reading it, however, he suddenly had a revelation as many mysteries lingering in his mind finally seemed to be resolved.

The so-called chronic wasting disease, referred to as CWD, was a disease similar to mad cow disease because it was mainly spread by deer. Some people called it rabies because the disease would be just as aggressive in the later stages. Because the sick deer moved and looked like a zombie from a movie, they were also called zombie deer.

The cause of the crazy deer disease was no ordinary virus or bacterium, but rather a kind of protein known as a prion. As long as it came in contact with the normal protein in the body, it could cause the normal protein to deform and convert.

The most painful thing was that this protein was extremely tenacious, like a cockroach that couldn’t be killed. Not only was it unaffected by a high temperature of 100 degrees Celsius, but it was also resistant to radiation, ultraviolet rays, and common disinfectants.

As long as the deer was infected with this prion, no known medicine could reverse the condition.

As of January 2019, rabies was reported in 24 states of the United States and two provinces in Canada; since there were only 48 states in the United States, that meant that half of the nation has already been affected by rabies.

Not only that, but the disease has spread outside of North America. Cases have also been found of reindeer and moose being affected in Norway, Finland, and even South Korea, which imported a large amount of antler. Fortunately, these three countries had limited areas, unlike the United States where the disease could spread throughout millions of square kilometers of land.

Some species of deer have become accustomed to long-distance migration. For example, thousands of wild reindeer in the Nunavut region of Canada would periodically migrate along with the wolves, making control of the disease extremely difficult.

There were too many forest parks in the United States suitable for the survival and reproduction of deer herds, and forest parks were often very close or even connected. Deer herds could migrate from one park to another without knowing that they were aiding in the spread of the disease.

What was more troublesome was that mad cow disease and crazy deer disease were only two of the many masterpieces of the prion. Additionally, it caused sheep pruritus, ferret infectious encephalopathy, and cat spongiform encephalopathy. These animal diseases were collectively referred to as “Infectious spongiform encephalopathy”.

Several similar diseases have been found within human society, including human mad cow disease transmitted from diseased cattle to humans. Related studies have shown that similar deer diseases could infect primates, such as monkeys. In theory, humans could also be infected, but no human cases have been identified yet.

The high vitality of prion protein made it resistant to conventional sterilization methods such as high-temperature cooking. The temperature of cooking rice and soup in the home would never kill the prion.

The spread of mad cow disease during those years was caused by feed manufacturers feeding the meat, brain and internal organs of sick cattle to normal cattle. The disinfection method while processing feed also failed to kill the prion.

His questions were finally answered. The meat powder with unknown ingredients in the Leshi dog food… was it made out of venison?

High-priced venison was impossible. It needed to be kept at a low cost. It was likely to be a powder made of high-risk deer brain, internal organs, and bones containing the spinal cord.

As for why the manufacturers dared to do this… He could only guess that it was because the infectious spongiform encephalopathy of dogs has not yet been found by the scientific community, so the manufacturers believed that there was no problem with including venison into dog food.

But if something was not found, did it not exist?

If sheep, cows, cats, ferrets, monkeys, and humans, all of which were unrelated to each other, could be infected by this disease, could house dogs and coyotes be able to survive it?