Killer mice of the Ice Road

QUESTION In the TV show Ice Road Truckers, one of the drivers caught a disease from deer mice living in his lorry. According to doctors, he had only a 2 per cent chance of survival. What are deer mice and what is the disease they carry?

Deer mice are rodents of the genus Peromyscus, found in North America. There are 60 species active at night, and they are found in habitats from Alaska to South America. While superficially similar to the house mouse, Mus musculus, they’re not closely related.

The most common species of deer mice are P. maniculatus which are greyish to reddish brown with white underparts.

Peromyscus comes from Greek meaning ‘ booted mouse’. They’re accomplished jumpers and runners, hence their common name deer mouse (coined in 1833) in reference to this agility.

The deer mouse is the primary vector for the Sin Nombre virus, which can cause the potentially fatal heart disease Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS), and rick Yemm, from Ice road Truckers, contracted it from deer mice in his truck.

About 30 per cent of deer mice carry the Sin Nombre virus, and breathing in dust contaminated with mouse urine or faeces infected Yemm with HPS. Other methods of transfer include contact with infected rodents’ urine, faeces or corpses.

Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome is a serious respiratory disease, fatal in about 36 per cent (not 98 per cent) of cases. Symptoms include flu-like effects such as fever, cough, myalgia, headache and lethargy. It’s characterised by a sudden onset of shortness of breath with rapidly evolving pulmonary edema (restricted breathing).

Doctors di agnosed 587 cases of Hantavirus in the U.S. in 2011. There’s no specific vaccine against the virus. Patients are placed in intensive care units for oxygen therapy.

Dr Ian Smith, Cambridge.

QUESTION Is eating of Bombay duck banned in Britain?

AlSO called bummalo or bombil, Bombay duck is a marine lizardfish, Harpodon nehereus, from southern Asia, found in large numbers in the Ganges Delta and the Arabian Sea of western India.

It’s a narrow, slimy fish, usually 6in to 8in long. Cooking it in a normal manner reduces it to a pulpy mass, so it’s normally dried, giving it a thicker texture and more intense flavour.

How this dried fish came to be known as Bombay duck is a mystery. One theory is that during the British raj, europeans couldn’t stand the smell of the fish drying in the sun because it reminded them of the odour of the wooden railway cars of the Bombay mail train. The Hindi for mail is dak, hence Bombay dak or Bombay duck.

For the Indian market, the whole fish is washed, split, boned and dried in the sun on scaffolds made from bamboo poles fixed in the sand by bars tied with thick ropes horizontally in lines.

For foreign markets, the fish is filleted and cut into rectangular pieces, soaked in brine and dried in the sun for 40 hours before being pressed and dried for a further ten hours, by which time they acquire the pungent taste sought by curry lovers. Bombay duck was once a common accompaniment in British curry houses, but was banned by the european Commission in 1997 after a batch of seafood, mainly shrimp and squid, imported from India was found to be infected with salmonella. The eU ruled fish imports to europe from India had to be prepared in approved freezing and canning factories.

Following intervention from the Indian High Commission, the regulations were adjusted in 2000, so the fish can still be dried in the open air, but it has to be packed in an eU-approved packing station.

Imports of Bombay duck are subject to a welter of eU documentation, including fumigation, phytosanitary, Chamber of Commerce and export agency certificates. Many cottage industries in India are unable to comply with these conditions.

Some wholesalers can produce fish to the correct standard, so Bombay duck remains available, but supplies are limited. A. J. Barlow ltd sells it at Birmingham fish market, and it can be bought online at The Fish Society and Southern Dried Fish as well as from Indian supermarkets.

Jom Bower, Birmingham.

QUESTION Did other European countries axe longstanding railway routes in the Sixties, as the Beeching report did in Britain?

WIDeSPreAD closures of railways in Ireland, both north and south of the border, occurred well before the Beeching report was implemented in the Sixties.

As early as 1938, an Irish government tribunal into the state finances of railways l ed to the Great Southern railway announcing a long list of branch lines to be closed, but no action followed immediately, due to the outbreak of World War II.

The post-war fuel crisis of 1947 caused the loss of many branch and local services, leaving the then eire with limited public services and, later, complete closures. By 1967, the present system was established.

However, there have been a couple of resumptions, namely limerick to Athenry (the Western Corridor) and west of Dublin a short section of long-closed track was restored to encourage out-of-town parking and use of trains into the city.

In Northern Ireland, the system was largely closed down during the Fifties, leaving only the main line between Dublin and Belfast, two Belfast commuter lines and the northern route in londonderry.

J. W. P. Rowledge, Newton Abbot, Devon.

QUESTION Who started the Korean War?

FUrTHer to the earlier answer, HMS Belfast was the royal Navy’s Far east flagship at the time. During the build-up to the war, along with other ships of the Far east Fleet, it kept close to Korea.

Following the UN resolution of June 27, 1950, HMS Belfast entered Korean waters and started bombarding targets almost immediately and assisted in landing British troops.

The U.S. Fleet arrived more than a week later, and it took a few days to sort out areas of responsibility. British and Commonwealth ships looked after the east coast and American ships the west, but we did have to help them out on occasion.

I didn’t read this in a history book: I was on HMS Belfast when it was happening.

Fred Wooding, Rushden, Northants.

Illness: Ice Road Trucker Rick Yemm