Extinction Level Event (4 page)

Mike routinely wakes up at 6:30am and showers before
heading to the local Department office located on 1308 West
Robinhood Drive, Stockton, California. After a quick breakfast he
drives the twenty minutes from his home to the office in his hybrid
Nissan
Altima
. While he did receive a few funny remarks from
his co-workers for its color, which happened to be green; by now
they have gotten over it and accept the fact that the car has a
somewhat fitting color for the job. He revels in having free reign
over his house during weekdays, as that gives him the freedom to
come home as late as necessary and leave early during morning rush
hours without too much hassle.

At six feet and three inches Mike towers over most of
his fellow Californians. Mike generally tries to exercise every
other day, but sometimes the schedule breaks and a day will be
skipped. Nonetheless, for his forty-two years he is in fairly fit
condition, with no beer belly and sizable biceps, a product of his
gym time. His son, Jake, who has recently turned eleven does not
share his dirty blond hair even though he does have the same blue
eyes. Jake usually comes over on weekends, where he spends most of
the days with the neighbor’s kids. During weekdays Jake stays at
his mother’s house and goes to school in her neighborhood. Mike’s
ex-wife Stefanie lives near Sacramento in Rocklin, a predominantly
suburb town. She drives Jake over every Friday and picks him up on
Sunday evenings. He also does the drive on occasion, but
nonetheless over the past three years it turned up to be him doing
thirty percent of the drives and Stefanie doing seventy percent of
them.
One day she is going to bring this up
, he knows, but
so far she hasn’t.
Just one more contentious issue that will
ruin a day. Although for now she understands that it will be
difficult changing the Friday drive, probably why the issue hasn’t
been brought up yet.

Checking the mirror for traffic, Mike drives along
the highway at the posted speed limit, letting the usual rush-hour
speed freaks pass him by. After twenty minutes on the highway from
Elk Grove, Mike pulls into the parking lot of the APHIS building.
The building is a large rectangular two-floored concrete building
located on the northern edge of the San Joaquin Delta College, a
small community college primarily focused on career-oriented A.S.
degrees. Once inside, Mike is immediately greeted by Laurie, a
co-worker of his. “Hi Mike, how’s it going?!” “Morning Laurie!
Excellent, a Tuesday as usual. Anything new today?”. “Actually,
yes, you’d be interested in this. Brand new stuff. John would want
you to check it out. He actually asked if you were in today,
although you know he’s pretty familiar with your schedule.”
“Really?”, asks Mike, “let me just put this stuff on my desk and
I’ll be right over”. John was the boss of the Stockton office, Mike
goes over to his office, A-3, and puts down his light briefcase and
workbook.. Spraying his office plant with water, Mike turns on his
Dell Dimension 9100. The Dimension 9100 was added two years ago but
nonetheless still has a reputation as a high performance dual-core
standard computer for deskwork.
I wonder what's up if John wants
me to look at something this early? Maybe it came in yesterday and
since I was home early I didn’t see it?
Logging on to his
e-mail, Mike sees two notes from John.

Opening the first one he read: [Hi Mike, please see
me in my office when you get here. We have a developing situation
near Bakersfield. See attached File]. Mike opens the file, and
sends it to the printer. Grabbing the short two page report he
heads out of the office door. After walking past another office to
the right he knocks on A-1’s door. “Mike! Come on in!”, exclaims
John. John Wilgram, Officer in charge of Scranton APHIS office, is
a heavyset bald man in his early sixties. After having worked for
the Department of Agriculture for over twenty five years, John has
had a desk job for the past decade and rarely left the office for
any kind of fieldwork. That was usually left to Michael
McCarthy.

“Sit down. I’m not going to offer you coffee, but how
about some cookies? They’re new.” “Sure, I’ll try one”, replies
Mike, grabbing a cookie from the tray on John’s desk, “what seems
to be this so-called 'odd' situation that came up?”. John sits back
in the black leather executive chair, gathering his thoughts,
“Well, it's like this. We have a farmer out near Bakersfield who
lost all of his worms. According to the report, all the worms are
coming out of the ground and dying within a few hours of exposure.
We don’t know why or how, which is why I want you down there ASAP.
The guys over at Bakersfield sent someone over to investigate- name
is Peter LaJoy. As you saw, he wrote the preliminary report. But
their job over at Bakerfield is Plant Protection and Quarantine.
They won’t help with this, unless we need to quarantine something.
If that happens, call them directly. Anyways, Laurie and Mark will
be going with you as well.” Mike thinks it through for a moment,
before responding, “Ok. Worms are dying, we’ll need to bring the
lab equipment. Could it be a new herbicide, or a chemical spill in
the water aquifer?” “No, I don't know. Just take what you need.
Bring samples back here”, says John. “Of course. Its’ like a three
hour ride though. By the time we get there-" “Doesn’t matter, so
long as you guys take off within the hour” replies John curtly.
“Alright, we’ll get on it right away”.

With that, Mike takes one more cookie and leaves
John’s office. Mike goes over to A-6, knocking on the door before
entering. “Mike! Talk to John already?” Laurie smiles as she looks
up from her desk. Tall, thin, with brunette hair curled in a bun
and tight dark work-outfit, Laurie was a friendly, outgoing
personality who also appealed to many men. At thirty, she was
everything a man could want in a woman, despite wearing glasses
instead of the contacts which many women prefer for aesthetic
reasons. Mike, however, had more of an appeal for work during the
last several years and so far their relationship had been a very
friendly, but professional one. A recent Ph.D graduate from UC
Berkeley in Soil Ecology and Physiological ecology, Laurie has been
a regular member of this Stockton APHIS office for over three
years. Leaning on the door frame, Mike quickly explains the
situation, “Yeah. We’re going down to Bakersfield. Or near it,
anyway. We have to check out a farm on 6 Lake Road. Some sort of
contamination”, he explains to Laurie. “Ok, what time do you want
to leave?”. "Uhh, if we can get all the stuff in the van, in about
twenty minutes”, replies Mike. “That quick?. . . don’t worry- I’ll
do it, as you know!” “I know, I know! See you in twenty!”, ends
Mike with a smile. Pushing himself off the door frame, Mike heads
down the hallway to the lab.
Time to get Mark
. The office’s
laboratory is a small yet well-lit room that houses the usual
assortment of microscopes, freezers, burettes, petri dishes,
calorimeters, cages, spectrophotometers, incubators, and
homogenizers that one would find in a lab intended for work on
plants and animals.

Mike found the former college football player sitting
at a computer terminal going over some unspecified information. A
large man of 6’1”, Mark’s seemingly only real interests in life
were football and zoology. Mark played football for UCLA while he
studied biology for a B.S, hoping to be a veterinarian. Afterwards
he changed his mind and pursued a Ph.D in molecular physiology,
intent on working on animal physiology. Soon afterwards he started
working for AHPIS in dealing with animal health issues, invasive
species, and even animal welfare. APHIS eventually recognized that
not everyone could be matched correctly with their field in a
changing work environment although Mark still found some fun in his
job. For the past six years Mark has been a regular at the Stockton
office.

“What’re you working on?” asks Mike, barging through
the door. He had a common habit of not knocking on people’s doors,
unless it was important. It really depended on the person. Mark
would never get the courtesy of a knock, John would. Mark looked up
from the screen, straightening his back from the slight hunch that
he would develop in front of computers, an yawned, “Not much, just
going over these Med-fly stats. Well, you know I’m writing that
report on the fly quarantine program that they’re doing in San
Diego. So you know the story. Flies are found. First we quarantine
the area and treat it with the usual mixture of pesticides and
bait. Then we start SIT”. “SIT?”, asks Mike. “SIT- stands for
Sterile Insect Technique. We grow a lot more fruit flies in a safe
location and irradiate them all. Then we release them into the wild
and let them mate with the wild ones. Within a generation or two
there shouldn’t be any left. Question I’m working on is this- Can
we improve this process? Like seriously, why don’t we cut back on
the pesticides first. Release the irradiated flies out into the
wild first. After three generations, there shouldn’t be any left-
they’ve been taken care of through attrition. We should only use
the pesticides if they survive the SIT approach. Basically I’ve
been working on this paper for two weeks”.

“I see. That’s fascinating. I know about the fruit
fly quarantines, but the SIT?- . . I don’t know, I guess I work too
much on ecology these days to take notice of other things. Listen-
you got the message from John?” “Yeah, I did”, replies Mark, “I’m
working on it. Let me just get a few field kits in the van. What
time do you want to leave?” Mike checks his watch before answering,
“How does 8:45 work for you? We need to be on the road there as
soon as possible”. “Works for me”. “Alright, then. See you at the
van. I’ve gotta finish up some things myself, and then we’ll be
going there soon”. Mike walks out of the lab, pausing to take a
look at the fruit flies held in a container along the side wall.
The hundreds of flies literally covered most of the space in the
large plastic-composite container. Some were flying around like no
tomorrow while others sat perched on twigs and obstructions in the
structure. Mike watched as one particularly large one came up to
the glass, surrounded by hundreds of others. The large red bulbous
eyes stared at him, scanning for any signs of life. The
Mediterranean fruit fly looks basically like a large bumblebee. The
only difference is that it has red eyes, a red and orange striped
abdomen, much less “fur” on its black spotted thorax, and like all
flies no conspicuous antennae structures on its forehead. After
another several seconds of staring at the creature Mike turns and
walks out of the lab.

Worm contamination near Bakersfield. Hmmm,
interesting. Have we ever had a scenario like this before? Cause if
we did, I don’t remember it.
Mike keeps going over all the
information that the report contained and that John mentioned to
him.
It looks like this might be another long day. At the rate
this day started, I’m not going to be home before 7:00pm at the
earliest.
Coming back into his office and falling into the
chair, Mike reopens his e-mail window. Mail from USDA, several
message from the Farm Service Agency (FSA) on farm conditions and
quality in the region, and an inquiry from the Agricultural
Research Service on the status of a forest conservation program
intended to protect the Giant Sequoias from invasive insect
species.
That shouldn’t be here, I haven’t been working on that
project in months.
Forwarding a copy of that last e-mail to
John, Mike turns to the task at hand. Exiting the building from the
left side rear door, he walks across a small parking lot to a
parked Dodge Sprinter van that the office uses for what are
jokingly referred to as “excursions”- really field work.

Mike walks around the van and unlocks the back door.
Pulling the door open he reveals the assortment of field equipment
that is usually kept in the vehicle. Plastic carry-kits and boxes
full of hygrometers, TDS testers, water samplers, thermometers, pH
indicators, temperature and oxygen tracer meters, and a mobile
dissection kit are all amongst the tools typically found in the
van’s cargo hold.
We need some quarantine containers for getting
samples back. Field radios? None? We should get some of those as
well.
Closing the doors and heading back into the building Mike
sees Mark comes out of the other side’s rear exit door carrying two
boxes. He walks up to the van, puts the boxes on the ground, and
starts opening the van’s doors. Mike goes in through the same door
he came out of and walks down the hallway to his A-3 office. Making
a right, he heads to Storage Room 2. Taking a key chain out of his
jeans pocket, Mike flips through the oftentimes confusing set of
keys until he finds the large one with 2 small ridges. Opening the
door he enters and begins looking through the racks to find what he
is looking for.
Containers, quarantine containers. . . we always
kept them on the second shelf!
Grabbing three, a large one, and
two smaller sized ones, Mike leaves the storage room and closes the
door behind him.

Taking the boxes outside the office building, he
leaves them on the ground. He then goes in and nearly bumps into
Laurie who is also walking down the hallway with a lap-top in her
hands. “Woah! Haha sorry. Good thinking, almost forgot- We’ll
definitely need that!”, exclaims Mike on seeing her. “Bet you would
forget”. Laurie glides past him and goes out the door. Mike goes
back to grab some walkie-talkies from the storage. Now remembering
which is the key for the storage room, the process goes much
quicker than before. He then walks back out with four compact
walkie-talkies and heads out for the van. Laurie, coming back by
now, see him pass again. “I’ll get those containers”. “Thanks!”
Man, that definitely helps a little.
Within another three
minutes everything that they will need for the field work is in the
van, and Mike is ready to take off.