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8.01.2000
Crow found in Rehoboth being tested for West Nile
 A Bristol County official said he sent the bird to a state lab because the circumstances surrounding its death appear suspicious.
By MARISA KATZ
Journal Staff Writer
REHOBOTH -- Bristol County Mosquito Control is among concerned groups from all over Massachusetts that have sent dead crows to the state Infectious Disease Laboratory to be tested for the West Nile virus.
The Boston lab has been flooded with hundreds of birds since state health officials announced last week that the virus was detected in Massachusetts for the first time.
The lab is using crows as a barometer for the potential threat of West Nile because the virus grows in birds and then may be transmitted to humans by mosquitoes.
But as of last night, only two crows in Massachusetts had tested positive for the virus: the original bird from Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood and another found in Hopkinton over the weekend. No cases had been identified in mosquitoes or humans.
Department of Public Health spokeswoman Roseanne Pawelec said yesterday that the state lab had tested the bulk of a batch of 200 birds that had arrived there since Friday morning. None showed any sign of the virus, she said.
"The birds came from all over the state," Pawelec said. "It's given us a very good geographic picture."
She said she didn't know if a dead crow found in Rehoboth last Thursday had been among the group already tested.
Bristol County Mosquito Control Supt. Alan DeCastro said he sent the bird to Boston because the circumstances surrounding its death appeared suspicious.
"If you find one on the side of a road, there's a good chance that a car hit it," he said. But in this case, the bird was found near a house on Rocky Hill Road.
DeCastro said the man who reported it went out for a walk Thursday evening and didn't see anything, but came back to find a crow lying under a pine tree.
"It was probably trying to fly up to that tree, to roost there for the night," DeCastro said. "But then it just fell down."
The West Nile virus -- which can cause encephalitis or swelling of the brain -- had not been seen in the United States until last summer, when it killed 7 people and sickened more than 60 in the New York City area.
So far this year, no human deaths have been reported. In addition to the two crows in Massachusetts, the West Nile virus has been detected in birds in Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Maryland.
But Pawelec said the virus has nothing to do with most of the birds that people are calling in about.
"It's not that we have more dead birds this year," she said. "It's just that awareness is so great that people are reporting it."
"Crows die all the time," she added. "They're scavengers, so they can eat contaminated food and drink contaminated water. They can also die from trauma -- they're prone to running into things."
In Bristol County, mosquito control officers are waiting for the official test results on the Rehoboth crow -- and for the rain to subside -- before proceeding with pesticide spraying.
As part of its normal mosquito control regimen, the county has been deploying larvicide to kill mosquito eggs and spraying pesticide in localized areas by request since early spring.
But lately, because of fear of the West Nile virus, the phones have been ringing nonstop.
"It's totally ridiculous," DeCastro said. "Between the fax and actual calls Friday, we got enough spray requests for one solid week's work."
Even if there are no confirmed cases of the West Nile virus in the area, he said, it will take at least several weeks to catch up on all the requests.
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