Someone's Gotta Do It

I stopped out at the Hawkeye Wildlife Area office and found the techs hard in an effort to slow the spread of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in Iowa's deer herd. This is dirty work. Lymph node samples are removed from deer heads by natural resources technicians

and sent in for testing to determine whether the individual was infected with CWD. The deer shown in this picture were killed during Iowa City's urban culling. CWD is a neurological disease caused when prions attack the brains of infected deer. Symptoms include weight loss, abnormal behavior, excessive salivation, loss of bodily functions, and listlessness.