North Dakota Health professionals are asking you to watch out for tularemia. It’s a rare infectious disease that can infect animals and people.
Also called “rabbit fever,” rodents and rabbits are most likely to get the infection.

But people can become infected by inhaling contaminated aerosols and drinking contaminated water. You can also get it from a tick bite.

For prevention, you’re asked to use insect repellent, avoid mowing over dead animals and wear gloves if you have to touch dead animals.

“If I was handling a dead animal that had tularemia and had a cut on my skin, it could get into my skin that way and then I may develop a skin ulcer,” says Michelle Dethloff, an epidemiologist for the North Dakota Department of Health. “If I ran over a rabbit while I was mowing my lawn, I can inhale it — then I will have things such as a fever or signs of respiratory infection.”

The North Dakota Health Department reports four cases of tularemia this year in humans. It can be effectively treated with antibiotics.

Well now between this and the tapeworm thing going around someone should start selling a supplemental trappers insurance. Ha

We had some tularemia near me last year I think, maybe the year before. I believe it may be negatively affecting our local rat population. I found a floater last year while trapping, and the landowner told me he found 4 dead rats this summer. I always wear gloves while skinning and fleshing, but dont wear anything while running my sets unless it's cold.

I think any person who trapped and skinned muskrats without gloves picked it up, I had it when 20 I think, not tested but am almost sure it was from floater rats I skinned. I was so sick with flu like symptoms I was hoping it killed me so I would not have to keep suffering, all night and part of a day on the bathroom floor.

Myself and a few other trappers I know here have had tularemia. It's a disease you don't want to get and is very serious if untreated and potentially deadly. There,s no problem processing infected rats but wear gloves, at all times, while handling and keep some disinfectant handy in the event you nick yourself. If you should happen to nick yourself disinfect the site immediately. If flu like symptoms develop seen a doctor and tell him you are a trapper and may have tularemia. Many are not aware of it and will initially consider it to be the flu.

Read about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tularemia

It is very bad when beaver get infected with it.Areas with overpopulated unmanaged beaver populations can spark an outbreak if water is low in the summer.Tularemia can spread like wildfire even to traplines where beaver have been properly managed.This will wreck traplines for a lot of other furbearers that depend on healthy beaver populations on the landscape.Beaver are the key species for the overall health of a trapline in habitat like boreal forest.
If you think a rat or beaver is sick when you skin it,open the gut and look for white coloured lesions on the liver.This is indicative of tularemia.
Rabbits can also harbour outbreaks of tularemia and liver spots are also indicitave of the disease in rabbits.

Better not tell my wife about any of this. I'd be skinning with a butter knife.