zombie deer disease
a fatal, contagious, incurable zombie disease right in your own backyard
Looking for herons on the river at dawn, I saw a baby deer instead, tucked in the tall soft grass. Flecks of white in a whorl, curled in upon himself. All morning we watched him from the balcony. He nibbled ivy and licked dew from daisies.
Deer deer! my daughter cheered.
As the hours went on, our enthusiasm faded. Where was his mother? Seems a long time for such a little fawn to be left alone. Unusual. Worrying.
Finally I saw his broken leg. He’d been left to die.
I told the others and there was alarm, sympathy, reckless attempts at resolution. Should we call a veterinarian—this is hunting country, no vet would set his leg— should we bring him food and water—prolonging the inevitable—the only mercy is to shoot him—but no one present had a gun. His black eye blinked up at us and he laid his head in the grass.
I called NC Wildlife Control. Apparently this region of Appalachia is a high-risk zone for Chronic Wasting Disease, a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy that affects deer, elk, moose, and caribou. Thus fawn rehabilitation is not available. The kind gentleman at Wildlife Control advised me either to ‘let nature take its course’ or to call the sheriff’s department to ‘euthanize it’; I was touched by his reluctance to say ‘starve’ and ‘come shoot it.’ I was given a phone number and instructed to say the critical phrase ‘deer is mortally injured’ to legally entitle the sheriff to come.
The fawn was, although still recumbent, avidly munching some shrubbery and flicking his tail with great vigor. I decided to give him a minute.
But I’d been tantalized by NC Wildlife guy’s mention of ‘Chronic Wasting Disease,’ and, although cervid neurology is not a particular specialty of mine, I dutifully trotted down the deer trail.
As if you didn’t have enough to worry about, I present to you ‘Zombie Deer Disease’:
Always fatal. Discovered in 1967, Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD or ‘Deer Zombie Disease’) has rapidly spread in incidence and geographical prevalence among cervids (deer family). As of 2025, it has been detected in at least 23 states, two Canadian provinces, and - oddly - South Korea, Norway, Sweden, and Finland.
Highly contagious. No treatments nor vaccines available. Transmitted directly through animal-to-animal contact and indirectly via infected material (i.e., saliva, urine, feces, and carcasses).
Symptoms:
Listlessness, showing little interest in surroundings
Lack of coordination
Frequent lowering of the head
Blank stare
Walking in set patterns
Drooling
Grinding teeth
Drinking lots of water and urinating frequently
Sounds suspiciously like me, but moving on.
Unusual for an infectious disease: CWD is caused by neither bacteria nor virus, but rather misfolded proteins called prions. Prions cause other, normal proteins in the brain to misfunction, resulting in severe brain damage.
It is not known if humans can become infected with CWD. No cases have yet to be reported. However, CWD is related to other prion diseases that do affect humans:
Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy: mad cow disease (called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans).
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease: incurable, fatal neurodegenerative disease, either inherited or obtained from having a surgery where infected tissue is transplanted in your body.
Kuru: exclusively seen in New Guinea, from eating human brains (last reported case was 2009 as the practice of funerary cannibalism has ceased).
and ominously, Fatal Insomnia, whose mere existence will now haunt any future sleeplessness I may experience. Incurable and fatal.
Transmissibility to humans being unknown but unfortunately rather probable considering our susceptibility to other prion diseases, it is mandated by law that all harvested deer in high-risk regions be buried thoroughly and not under any circumstances consumed or transported across county lines.
Also, as completely invisible as this is, do try to avoid coming into contact with anything that a deer may have touched or peed upon.
Many a zoonotic illness leaps over the thin, arbitrary line into human animals, and a highly-contagious, always-fatal, incurable zombie disease is the last thing humanity needs at the moment.
Anyway, cheers, welcome to Appalachia.
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