Nick Seibel, editor and publisher of the Silver City Daily Press, covers top stories each week in the Silver City Report. This week, he updates us on the horse that was infected with New World Screwworm, talks about a recent candidate forum, and more.
Susan Morée:
You have an update for us on that poor horse that was infected with New World screw worm. How's the horse doing?
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, well, I mean, the horse is recovering. You know, it was according to the veterinarians that treated the horse. The wound on the horse when they discovered it really didn't have the strong odor that's usually associated with that infestation. until they started to clean up the wound and found larvae deeper in the horse's tissue.
Susan Morée:
Eww.
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, it was unpleasant, but so far, no new cases reported in the area. Of course, there's an infestation zone, which is a 20 kilometer radius around where the horse was in Mimbres. There's a lot of sort of mystery around that particular infestation, because a lot of folks say, well, did the horse come from somewhere? But as it turns out, the horse had not left that property. Other animals that were on the property hadn't recently traveled on or off of the property. So a lot of mystery around how the fly got there to infect said horse. Generally, the experts say the flies travel at most about a mile or a mile and a half, but they can travel up to 10 miles per day. But not having had any other cases, we don't really know how that came to pass. So whether there's undetected infections that are out there, whether there's infestations in wild animals in the area. At the public meeting, the person from the state said that as far as they knew, the fly could have traveled in the cabin of a truck from somewhere else. You just don't know how that went down. But they are continuing with monitoring. They've got that infestation zone where you're supposed to have permission to transport animals in or out of there. They're also releasing sterile flies throughout the area to try to address the potential for flies out there in the wild and make sure that this doesn't spread any further.
Susan Morée:
So if you're driving around in your vehicle and you've got a fly in the vehicle, maybe you want to kill it?
Nick Seibel:
I mean, I usually want to do that anyway. One of the things they said is you can't really tell, and it doesn't really look any different from any other fly, to the naked eye.
Susan Morée:
I don't think I'm going to get too close to a fly anyway to examine it.
Nick Seibel:
This is where having a newspaper subscription really comes in handy because that rolled up newspaper is excellent.
Susan Morée:
Indeed.
Nick Seibel:
That's right.
Susan Morée:
I love that you got a little plug in there. And let's talk about the candidate forums for District 39. The election is in November. What was your forum like?
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, well, early voting got started, well, got started yesterday, in fact, across New Mexico. Not a lot of contested races on the local level here in Grant County. Most of it was decided in the primary. But there is of course a contested race for Grant County Sheriff, but the Republican candidate there declined to participate, so we won't be able to have one there, which left us with New Mexico House District 39, which is currently held by Republican Luis Terrazas. He's being opposed by Democrat Raul Turrieta, and they squared off in a forum last Friday night sponsored by the Daily Press. That was just one night after they met in a similar forum sponsored by the Grant County Beat, which is an online publication here. In the Thursday night forum, the Beat forum, was confrontational, a little testy at times. And things started out that way in the Friday forum, too. They definitely, you know, the candidates took some hot shots at each other. But it definitely ended on an odd note. I mean, having done a lot of these candidate forums, I can't ever recall anything quite like that. The last audience question that we asked was about, asking each one of them to say something positive about the other's service to the community. And it really got emotional. In fact, the candidates at the conclusion of the question stood up and hugged it out, which was the main photo on our front page on Tuesday at the Daily Press.
Susan Morée:
Let's move on to Gila Regional Medical Center. You've got some news for us about that.
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, and that's pretty positive news there. Gila Regional, of course, is the county-owned hospital here in Silver City. And they've been named a regional hub in the new state health initiative known as the Healthy Horizons Initiative. They're gonna be coordinating the expenditure of about a little more than $15 million to improve rural healthcare in this part of the state. So Gila Regional is right at the center of that.
Susan Morée:
Okay, and where can readers find these stories, Nick?
Nick Seibel:
Check us out anytime online at scdailypress.com.
