A mystery disease was ripping through the cattle in the Texas panhandle.
In early March, roughly three weeks after veterinarians in the panhandle spoke about the first illnesses, one of us (Russo) texted a couple of veterinary colleagues in the thick of the outbreak a recent publication on how H5N1 bird flu was killing unusual numbers of sea lions throughout South America. The dairy cow symptoms sounded like influenza to me. One of those colleagues quickly replied. Over the next few days, he and I texted back and forth in a flurry about whether the mystery cow disease might be highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), more widely known as bird flu. When I asked about wild birds, this veterinarian noted that there were “a ton of dead pigeons” around the cattle pens and that now he was starting to second-guess his initial suspicion of poison as the cause. I told him to get the cows tested for HPAI, even if the lab laughed at him. As a dairy-poultry veterinarian, I also asked for pictures of the insides of some of the pigeons, trying to determine if I could observe the lesions characteristic of this kind of avian influenza.