R.I.P. Scout26
In less than a decade, the fungus has been identified in at least nine Eastern states, and although it affects a number of species, it's especially threatening to rattlesnakes that live in small, isolated populations with little genetic diversity, such as those found in Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New York.....Biologists have compared its appearance to the fungus that causes white nose syndrome in bats, which since 2006 has killed millions of the creatures and continues to spread across North America.It's unclear, though, if snake fungal disease, "ophidiomyces ophiodiicola" was brought to the United States from elsewhere, as was white nose fungus, or if it has always been present in the environment and for some unknown reason is now infecting snakes, biologists say."I think potentially this could overwhelm any conservation effort we could employ to try to protect this last remaining population," said Doug Blodgett, a biologist with the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife who has been studying the state's rattlesnake population for 15 years. "We don't have any control over it. It's just completely out there in the wild."
Mutant Snakes. That's how this will end.
Could be bad ju-ju though... if rodent populations explode, then coyotes might move in, and start disappearing neighborhood cats. Or the rodents go unchecked, and spread other diseases, or do some plant damage, crop damage, get into houses more.
