Chickens, rats, & my battle with leptospirosis, by Beth Clifton

Zoonotic disease can hit you anywhere

GREENBANK,  Washington––Sometimes ANIMALS 24-7 finds article topics right in our own backyard.

Like World Zoonoses Day,  commemorated annually on July 6.

Today is the 140th anniversary of the first administration of the human post-exposure rabies vaccine by Louis Pasteur on July 6, 1885.

“Zoonoses is the collective term for zoonotic,  or animal-borne diseases,”  reminds the World Zoonoses Day founding organization,  the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative,  self-described as “a nonprofit scientific research organization that develops vaccines and antibodies for HIV,  tuberculosis,  and emerging infectious diseases.”

But the ANIMALS 24-7 coverage of World Zoonoses Day did not begin with an International AIDS Vaccine Initiative media release,  or even from general familiarity with a range of zoonotic diseases,  including rabies,  that we have been reporting about for decades.

Henry the rooster

It began with Henry the rooster.

In mid-winter 2024 someone dumped a young rooster we eventually named Henry at Rhododendron Park near Coupeville,  Washington,  where we often go for exercise and to walk our little dog Teddy.

Henry was a clever rooster.  When people arrived at the park,  including us,  he was quiet as a mouse.  Knowing Henry as we do now,  there is otherwise nothing quiet about him,  but at Rhododendron Park,  also inhabited by coyotes,  bald eagles,  ravens,  great horned owls,  and other poultry predators,  sometimes including homeless people who might fancy a chicken dinner,  Henry understood that silence was often the best way to stay safe.

Weeks went by and still Henry wandered.  I even called a home next to the park whose owners kept chickens,  some of whom looked just like Henry,  a Plymouth barred rock breed.

Henry & the Tesla

The chicken keepers did not claim him.

For six weeks I brought Henry fresh corn.  Henry began to follow Teddy and I around the baseball diamond field where we walked.

Henry even recognized the sound of our Tesla.  How’s that for a clever rooster?  Teslas make very little sound because they are electric.

Eventually Henry literally jumped into the car with us.  He turned into a big beautiful rooster.  He came into the house,  sat on my lap,  and at first allowed me to kiss him.

As I was beginning to feel like Henry’s hen,  we decided to find him a wife.  A friend who is also a chicken keeper gave us a beautiful little speckled Sussex hen.  Merritt and I named her Arabella and it was love at first sight.

Henry & Arabella

I became their slave.  Henry no longer saw me as his rescuer,  but rather as a threat to his lovely Arabella.  I came to accept that Henry is an amazing rooster who will defend Belly to the death,  but only after I lost a substantial piece of skin from the back of my left hand to one of his sudden vicious pecks.

After that I invested in a squirt bottle so that Henry remembers who’s the boss.

Arabella,  unfortunately,  is a drama queen.  She is wonderful.  Very much a girl,  but I would swear she screams sometimes when I enter their yard just to get Henry in protective mode.

Arabella is not actually frightened of me at all.  She seems comfortable around me.  She wears a “saddle” now,  sort of a chicken chastity belt to protect her back from becoming raw when Henry jumps on her too often,  yet she does often like to attract Henry’s protective attention,  apparently just for reassurance.

Visitors

The biggest down side to keeping chickens is that when one has chickens,  one will also have rats.  Chickens are messy eaters.  That means that wherever the chickens are fed,  spilled food will attract every other animal in the neighborhood to consume the leftovers.

Our securely fenced chicken yard,  which was for many years a cat yard,  relatively rarely attracted problematic wildlife when our cats were the only invited users.

When former neighbors had chickens,  those chickens attracted rats,  and those rats occasionally explored the cat yard,  briefly,  but our cats tended to make short work of them.

All of that has changed.  Daily uninvited guests include whole coveys of quail,  flocks of blackcapped chickadees,  sparrows,  wrens,  towhees,  chipmunks,  both grey and Douglas squirrels,  raccoons sometimes,  and even deer before we learned the knack of using a network of gates and bungies that allow Henry and Arabella to use the rest of our yard by daylight while keeping the baffled deer out on the lawn or in the surrounding woods.

We like rats

Rats of course come too.

As a general rule,  we like rats:  cute,  clever,  personable,  friendly critters when given a chance,  but unfortunately also dangerous due chiefly to their excretory and urinary habits.

Since rats lack the physical structures to store excrement or urine,  they go wherever they go.  This means keeping a house or yard clean means keeping rats out,  no easy feat without harming them.

The one cat we have left,  down from eight a decade ago,  is an amiable old rescue from my vet tech days in Florida,  named Sebastian.

Sebastian likes nothing better than hunting rats,  but he too prefers not harming them.  Instead,  Sebastian brings them inside and turns them loose.

For years I caught Sebastian’s then relatively rare presents of live rats bare-handed and released them into blackberry thickets a safe distance from our house––even one rat I found hiding in my shoe when I stepped into it.

One rat bit me

But after Henry and Arabella arrived,  rat arrivals and removals increased markedly in frequency.  As rapidly as I removed them,  Sebastian brought more in.

Most rats I caught and removed were docile.  One,  however,  in late spring 2025 bit me in a panic.  I washed the wound,  treated it with antibiotic ointment,  and it healed quickly.

While catching rats bare-handed was a matter of responding quickly to the circumstances of the moment,  I have always practiced good hygiene around Henry and Arabella.

I wore disposable gloves,  washed each time I was out with the chickens,  wore vet tech clogs,  and removed them each time before returning inside our home.

Now I wash with soap and water and use Germ-X each time too.  Merritt can testify that I keep everything about the chickens spic-and-span,  including removing chicken poop from all parts of our property,  not just the chicken yard.

But the rats are there

But the rats are there,  inevitably,  defecating and urinating,  invisibly contaminating any puddles formed either by clean-up chores or rainfall.

Henry and Arabella are pets,  given the middle name Davis in honor of our late friend Karen Davis,  founder of United Poultry Concerns.

(See Karen Davis, Ph.D., United Poultry Concerns founder, dead at 79.)

They are well fed,  dewormed regularly,  and given probiotics.  They get the best food,  including all kinds of fruit and lettuce.

Headaches

All seemed to be well,  except that for some time I often felt run down and had morning headaches that could last into the evening,  until on the afternoon of May 28,  2025 I felt completely exhausted,  with a raging headache,  skipped supper,  and went to bed early with alternating violently shaking chills and fever.

I remember little of the next three days.  The chills and fever grew worse.  At first I tried to get up to look after Henry and Arabella,  but by the second day I even delegated that to Merritt.  I didn’t eat.  I drank some ice water because I knew I had to drink,  and once a cup of chamomile tea,  yet even refused my morning coffee.

I had never been so sick in my life.  Covid,  compared to this,  was mild.

Sitting beside me,  Merritt kept ANIMALS 24-7 going from his laptop,  sometimes suggesting I should go to the hospital,  but not forcefully enough to break through my suspicion that my symptoms would not be taken seriously.

Martha Norwalk

We were scheduled to be guests on the Martha Norwalk radio show about animals on Sunday morning,  June 1.  Merritt warned Martha that I might not be up to doing it.

Meanwhile,  I finally promised Merritt that if I did not feel better by Sunday morning,  I would let him take me to the hospital.  By Sunday morning I was no longer even drinking ice water.

Martha got about half an hour’s notice.  She filled some of the empty air time,  I learned later,  with prayers and meditation on our behalf.

At almost exactly the time we would have been on the air,  Merritt helped me to a gurney in the Whidbey General Hospital emergency room.

Rat bite fever?

As I had feared,  the emergency room doctor said I did not meet the criteria for admission,  but ordered a blood test.  Merritt argued with him.  Finally he asked if I wanted to be admitted.  I said yes.  Then the blood test results came back and clinched it.  My red blood cell count had almost dropped off the chart.

I spent the night at Whidbey General Hospital on intravenous antibiotics,  fluids,  and pain relief for body aches I rated at nine on a scale of 10.  Nobody questioned that self-assessment.

Rat bite fever was considered a diagnostic possibility,  but a female doctor with tropical experience suspected I had leptospirosis,  a rare disease in the U.S. and even rarer here in Washington state,  where fewer than five cases per year are discovered.

The possibility of leukemia was eliminated because of the speed of onset of my symptoms. That was the only good news we got all afternoon and the next day.

Witnessed an attempted suicide

Finally,  that evening,  I was sent by ambulance to Providence Hospital in Everett for a more advanced diagnosis and course of treatment.  By then I had become mildly jaundiced.

Frequent blood tests continued to show a low red cell count,  but the afternoon of my first full day at Providence brought a jolting reminder that whatever else was wrong with me,  at least I was still emotionally healthy and had my wits about me.

My ninth floor window at Providence offered a spectacular if distant view of the Saratoga Passage and Whidbey Island,  where we live.  Merritt and I were looking out the window to see if we could recognize our neighborhood,  when we noticed a young man wandering aimlessly about on the parking lot roof,  four floors above the ground.

Suddenly the young man crawled out on an overhang.  I sent Merritt to the nurse’s station to get help,  but he was only at the door when I screamed,  “He jumped!”

The young man landed in bushes and survived,  barely moving,  invisible to passers-by.  He lived at least partly because we got eighteen doctors,  nurses,  and security guards to respond immediately.

Weil’s syndrome

By then I had been formally diagnosed with Weil’s syndrome leptospirosis,  the worst kind of lepto a human can get,  but with each day and night at Providence I improved.

Merritt drove three hours every day I was in the hospital to stay with me and keep my spirits up.

After four nights at Providence I was discharged and sent home,  with a further course of antibiotics and warnings that I would not be fully well again for months,  that I would continue to tire easily and become frustrated with the slow pace of recovery.

This is unfortunately true.  I’m home.  It will take me a few months to get completely well, but I’m back doing all my chores,  walking our dog Teddy,  and enjoying life.

I love our two chickens,  Henry and Arabella.  They have safety and freedom and are clearly enjoying their lives.

However long they live,  we will continue to take care of them.

Vaccinated Teddy

Almost our first action upon my return home was to have Teddy vaccinated against leptospirosis.  Even though leptospirosis is as rare among dogs here in Washington as it is among humans,  we know now that it does exist somewhere in our yard.

While there is no vaccine against leptospirosis for humans,  there is a leptospirosis vaccine for dogs.  Protecting Teddy was only good sense.

.           If you have a dog,  your vet may have recommended the leptospirosis vaccine for your dog.   We recommend accepting this advice if you have any sign of rats around,  as almost everyone does.  You may have only healthy rats,  but rats are immune carriers of leptospirosis,  so the first you will know of it existing near you is if you or a family member or a pet gets seriously ill.

What exactly is leptospirosis?

What exactly is leptospirosis?  A public health department nurse called me soon after my return home to make sure I knew,  and to ask about the circumstances of my becoming infected.

According to Global Morbidity and Mortality of Leptospirosis,  by Federico Costa of the Yale School of Public Health,  “Leptospirosis is a zoonotic bacterial disease that affects vulnerable populations such as rural subsistence farmers and urban slum dwellers,  a life-threatening disease recognized as an important cause of pulmonary haemorrhage syndrome.

“Leptospirosis is among the leading zoonotic causes of morbidity worldwide and accounts for numbers of deaths which approach or exceed those for other causes of haemorrhagic fever.

“A health threat in new settings”

“Leptospirosis has emerged as a health threat in new settings,”  Costa warns,  “due to the influence of globalization and climate.  Disasters and extreme weather events are now recognized to precipitate epidemics,”  as the leptospirosis spirochetes become active and travel in contaminated water.

“Case fatality for pulmonary haemorrhage syndrome and Weil’s disease,”  Costa reports,  “is more than 10% and 70% respectively.

“In addition,  leptospirosis is increasingly recognized as an important cause of undifferentiated fever.  The majority of leptospirosis patients are not recognized or are misdiagnosed as having malaria,  dengue,  and other causes of an acute febrile illness.”

I can testify first-hand that leptospirosis is not a threat to ignore.

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