Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Sentinel Chickens

Episode Date: August 25, 2026

Sawbones' least favorite animal, mosquitoes, are back with yet another reason they suck: Dengue Fever has made its way into Florida. But don't worry. Dr. Sydnee talks about some very special chickens looking out for us, especially at the most Magical place on earth. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/ Native Women Lead: https://www.nativewomenlead.org/ Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinsawbones

Sawbones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. Hello, everybody, and welcome to Sawbones. It's a marital tour for Misguided Medicine.

Me? Thanks for asking. I'm your co-host, Justin McRoy. And I'm Sid. I'm going to open my water. Trying to drink more water, Sid, and I am. Yeah. Well, opening it is the best way to start. Opening is step one every time. You're never going to get in there if you don't open it. I keep filling it up. And then at the end of the day, I'm like, I didn't finish you, did I? And it's just a one bottle. I got to get better. So I'm just going to leave this precarious open water bottle around sign style at all times until my hydration improves. See, I hesitate to drain my giant water bottle that I carry around all day because it makes like a handy weapon just in case, you know? I look intimidating when I'm walking down the street carrying my gigantic hydroflask. Do you ever forget that you put the generic meo blueberry flavor into your water and then when it hits, it's like, woof? Because I was not expecting that particular berry blast. and I was reaching for a nice cool spring

and I somehow ended up inside Kool-Aid man's spleen. Can I tell you something, Justin? This is why I'm a purist. I like my drink to taste like it's supposed to. I like water to taste like water. You don't like water. I like water and I like it to taste.

I don't like flavored water. I realize right now we will never be allowed to do ads for flavored water. I like flavored water. Because I'm saying I don't like, I like my water to taste like water. I want my ginger ale to taste like ginger ale. If I wanted,

What is this berry blast? I don't know. It's off-brand Barry Mio. I would eat a berry. I don't want flavor and water. Sorry. If you wanted to hit with a berry blast, Kool-Aid style, you would just reach for nature's. I eat a berry.

Nature's grape, the blueberry. Gross. That's gross, Sydney. Yuck. I never did like that. I never drank Kool-Aid. The only thing, high-seed grape is a kid. Box.

What I do, ecto-cooler? No. Taylor loved ecto-cooler. I only did a high-sie-grape. Circleberry? Only high-sie grape. And then I grew out of that, and I've never looked back. Don't drink juice.

I'm not saying don't. Another sponsor down the 20. That wasn't an order. It sounded like I was an instruction. I was saying, I don't. I left out the eye. I don't drink juice. Okay.

I like fruit, but not juice. Fair. There you go. That's not what we're talking about today. I know what we're talking about today. This is what's on my mind. I am going to drink the rest of this, by the way. Don't think me a hypocrite.

Well, you can. I have to dehydrate. Our position on mosquitoes here at Sawbones has always been very clear. We don't like them. We don't like mosquitoes. And we asked a bunch of entomologists one time. Uh-huh. Is that the bug one?

Yep. I can never remember the bug one or the word one. Etymology is words. Entomology is bones. We asked a bunch of entomologists. Hey, should we get rid of all the mosquitoes? A decent number of them were like, Yeah, probably.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah, we don't like mosquitoes. I thought if anybody was going to be like, oh, my precious children, nope. There wasn't even one dork who was like, wow, they're beautiful. Nope. Pretty much universal. They're like, yeah, let's wipe these dudes out.

There was no, like, I feel like probably in all the sciences, everybody kind of has their little favorite thing. Of all the things that they're a specialist in, there's like the favorite. Like for me, my favorite antibiotic is doxycycline. You know, this is classic knowledge. We know this. I figured there must be somebody out there who's like my favorite bug is mosquito. But in that room, that cross-section of entomologists, no one, nobody. Or at least they didn't, maybe they felt intimidated. Maybe they didn't know it because there was so much anti-mosquito

sentiment. Yeah, they knew us. Where we were at. Mosquitoes are like the most, if you don't know this, if you haven't listened to our show before, if you haven't heard those episodes. Mosquitoes are like the most deadly creature on Earth, the most deadly creature out there because they carry all sorts of terrible illnesses that make humans sick. And because of that, they've like changed the course of history with some of these illnesses. And what the entomologist told us is that they're not particularly necessary to like the food web, that there are other things that would fill the void. So if we decided to eradicate all mosquitoes, it probably would be okay. That was the sentiment in the room, I think, was like, probably, probably. Probably. Famously, they spread malaria. That's probably

what you think of first. But also lots of other things, yellow fever, dange, West Nile virus, Eastern equinecteisheleitis, Zika, Chikungunya. There's so many. And as the climate change, we will start to see some of these spread to areas that maybe didn't typically see these infections previously because if it's warmer there, the mosquitoes will be there. Right. And if it's the kind of mosquito that can carry that virus, eventually it will take up residence in that population, right? Right. In Florida recently, there have been 23 cases of dengue fever, and these are locally acquired cases. There have been more cases in Florida, but they were able to connect them to travelers.

So they left the country, got Dengay, and came back. There have been 23 locally transmitted cases of Dengay in Florida. And that's a steep rise. There are only seven on August 8th. As of now, there's 23. So there's like three counties, Pinellas, Hillsborough, and Miami Day that have alerts out because Dengay is in Florida. So that would be, I mean, this is, we've always occasionally had cases of Dengue in Florida. but if we're seeing this like huge uptick in locally acquired cases,

that tells us that mosquitoes in Florida now might carry dange. Now, in these articles, there was a concept mentioned that caught one of our listeners' attention. And that was Maddie. Thank you, Maddie for this suggestion. In these articles about dange in Florida, it was mentioned that Florida uses something called sentinel chickens to help with mosquito surveillance. So I want to talk about sentinel chickens. Okay.

I've never heard that. I was about to say, have you ever heard the term sentinel chickens? I have never heard the term sentinel chickens, and I'm pretty sure it would have stuck with me if I had. I think I'm going to get into the history of sentinel chickens. But I think if you want to conceptualize what we're talking about, you've heard of, it's a very West Virginia of us, you've heard of the canary in the coal mine. Sure, of course. Well, this is a kinder, gentler version of the canary in the coal mine. If you didn't know the canary in the coal mine, if there were deadly gases that had been released in the mine, canaries would be especially susceptible to those.

So they would take the canary down. If the canary kicked, it's time to go. Time to get out of the coal mine. Yeah. This does not end in the same way. I want to preface with that. Okay. Great relief to all the canaries out there, I'm sure.

Well, all the chickens primarily. Sure. Right. Okay. So one of the mosquito, I'm going to take you back to where this started. One of the mosquito-borne viruses, I haven't mentioned so far, is Murray Valley Encephalitis, briefly called Australian Encephalitis. Oh, did they, how did they shed it?

How did they ditch that? You know, I didn't get into that. It was already called Murray Valley Encephalitis, but then because there was a very, like, large and then publicized outbreak, people started calling it the Australian encephalitis. Probably, like, people outside Australia, right? Yeah. Like, that would be wild if you have multiple, viruses that caused encephalitis and you decide to label one after the country you live in.

Yeah. When it already has a different name. You wouldn't do that. No, I mean, like, it was probably us, right? Probably us? Probably. I'm sorry. It was probably our fault.

I don't mean like sawbones. I mean like America. Yeah. It's usually us. There are lots of viral encephalitities. That's the word? Yeah. Ooh.

Oh, I guess you could say encephalitis. But when I type... So worried she's going to jump. She, I feel so worried she's going to jump and call me. She's, she's, she's looking to jump and call me. She's, she's, she's, Honoring out, I can tell. All of it's sitting on my lap.

This is a very stressful recording environment now. Do you want me to? No, no, no. She's purring. Okay. Well, I'm just saying I'm not at ease with the energy in this studio. I need to tell you about the encephalitis. Okay.

Do you know what encephalitis is? No. You know what anitis is. What's anitis? Sick. This is the illness? Inflammation of the. Encephalal.

Encephala. Brain. Brain. Brain inflammation. Yeah. Brain inflammation. Good. Yeah.

If you told me what each of the components meant, I was able to cobble those together, those concepts after you told me what each half of the word meant, the Latin. You thought I would just get it. I thought you would know Idis because we've talked about it before. Yeah, but like we've talked about a lot of things before. That's the problem. So there are a lot of these encephalitities, viruses that can cause inflammation. of the brain that are carried by mosquitoes.

There's things we've heard about, like West Nile virus. There's a bunch of encephalitis. There's eastern equine, western equine, St. Louis, encephalitis. There's lots of them. The symptoms, they vary a bit from virus to virus, but they're pretty much similar. You initially get some flu-like symptoms, something vague and you feel bad, but it can progress to some really severe symptoms, seizures or delirium. You can even have comas, or you can even die in some cases.

And it depends across different viruses, they're different degrees of severity. Okay. Okay. Specifically, when we're talking about Murray Valley encephalitis, it is in the same family of viruses as dengue, which we've already mentioned. It is a, I like to say flava virus, although I've had many professors who say flava virus. No. If you're doing a podcast with someone who's going to reference flavor of flav when you mention it, you say flavor virus. Yes, flava virus.

It is one of the flavaverde. It's a flavivirus. They mainly infect mammals and birds. And they're usually spread their arboviruses, which is short for arthropod viruses. So viruses that are spread by arthropods. I was about to say tree viruses. So I'm really glad I kept that to myself. They're spread by ticks and mosquitoes primarily.

The reason they're called flaviviruses, and we may have talked about this before when we talked about yellow fever, but just as a refresher. Flavis is Latin for yellow. This is why it's probably supposed to be flava violence. Because it's flab. Anyway, and yellow fever is named because you tend to get some liver damage and jaundus. So the yellow virus, the yellow fever, flabavirus. That's where that all comes from. So anyway, this group includes other things that we've already talked about, right?

Like Dengue or Zika, things like that. Okay. So there have been several major outbreaks throughout history. of Murray Valley Encephalitis. We look back and we're able to say like, oh, you know, that outbreak of something in 1917, that was probably Murray Valley and Suffolitis. Specifically in Australia, and there was a really bad one with 58 cases and a 40% mortality rate in 1974. So I know that sounds like not a lot of cases, but remember, this isn't like we're getting this from the mosquitoes.

We're not spreading it person to person, so you're not going to get the same sorts of numbers in a lot of these. the same. Right, like that you would with COVID. But it is a very severe illness. So even a relatively, in the big picture, small number of cases, like 58 cases, is a huge deal because those patients are going to need probably a lot of intensive medical support, right? A lot of health care attention for each one of those patients. So especially if it was in a smaller community, you could get overwhelmed. So this outbreak occurred in 1974. And, and And because at that point, they had identified the virus. They had gone back historically and said, hey, we think we know that these other outbreaks were the same. We know it's carried by mosquitoes. We need to find some ways to better control the spread of this virus. Like moving forward, we need to know when it's out there, and we need to mitigate the mosquito

population and its ability to spread the virus. So if we want to know, do the local mosquitoes right now, can, Harry, Murray Valley Encephalitis virus. How could we do that? Ask them. Okay. They are bugs. What if they make shapes like Charlotte's Web? They do like drones, like

fly and make shapes in the... We've already covered this. Mosquitoes don't do anything helpful. We're cool or fun. Yeah, I don't know then, Sid. I mean, you could try and catch them. Yeah. And look for the virus in them. Can't tell by the taste? No. Which you could do. I mean, and we do. I will say, that is done. What I just described. Go out and try to catch

mosquitoes. You can set trap. They're attracted to carbon dioxide. That's why they're attracted to us is because we exhale carbon dioxide. They're the worst. So you can set up CO2 traps to draw in mosquitoes and then check them. So you can do that. That's one thing. You could let them bite you and see if you get sick, but that's not. You think after they check them, they take them to Squish City? Got to, right? I hope so. Got to. Or we could think about are there other animals that get this virus? In this case, in this case. In this case, waterfowl and chickens. Both can become infected with Murray Valley encephalitis. The nice thing specifically about chickens is that while they can get infected

and this is true for some of the other things we'll talk about, they're considered dead ends from a virological standpoint because the chickens do not get sick so the virus gets in them from the mosquito. They have a very short period of time where if you were trying to find the virus in their blood you would find it

and then they create antibodies against it, and they're fine. Hmm. What that means, though, is that if you tested that chicken's blood after they were bitten by that mosquito, you could find those antibodies, and that would show you that the local mosquitoes are transmitting the virus. How long does it stick around in there, do you know? The antibodies are going to be there for quite a while. The virus is not there. I mean, the antibodies, I guess, I don't know the lifespan of a chicken. Presumably the antibodies are going to be there the whole life of the chicken.

Okay. But you're going to do surveillance pretty frequently if you're going to do this. Gotcha. Like you're out there checking every two weeks. Do these chickens have antibodies against this virus, meaning that they were exposed to? You have something to compare it to previously. Yeah. If you're going to do this, you're going to.

And I mean, obviously you also want to make sure that you check the chickens beforehand and make sure that they didn't have antibodies beforehand. So this begins the story of sentinel chickens. New South Wales started by placing some what they called sentinel chicken flocks. Sentinel meaning like these will be a signal to us. These chickens we put out into areas where they're mosquitoes. We have tested them to make sure they don't already, they haven't already been infected with this virus.

And we'll put these flocks out in places where we know the mosquitoes will bite them. And then we will go draw chicken blood every week or two and see if they've got antibodies. So, okay, I wish I had been there when they drop these chickens off. Because if I'm a chicken, I'm like, okay, so guys, let me just get this straight. What am I doing out here? What do you want me to do? Just kick it? There's nothing.

Why are you leaving us here? What are we doing out of here? Now, listen, the chickens also exhale carbon dioxide. So they're going to get bitten by mosquitoes anyway, conceivably. You said they put them in places where they're. I'm just wondering what the chickens thought they were doing. That must have been very confusing for them to be dragged out to the middle of nowhere left. And then every once in a while, some guys come back and take your blood?

They don't kill them. They just take their blood. And this is good because, like I said, they are trapping. And even in the wake of this outbreak, they were trapping mosquitoes too. So they go out over the course of a night and trap mosquitoes. But the thing is, just because you find the virus in like a mosquito, you don't know, has it raised to a level where we're going to see it transmitting in humans. Well, the chickens are going to answer that for you. So there was a quote.

I love reading articles from Australia because in this quote from one of the professors from the Arbivirus Emerging Disease Unit there who was doing this work, we estimate chickens are bitten by mazzies. That would be mosquitoes, I assume. Ooh. We estimate chickens are bitten by mazzies up to 1,000 times a night. And every time a mosquito bites, it injects saliva and the virus is in that saliva. So it's a numbers game with 15 chickens in each flock. The chances of finding the virus increase as the number of. of positive birds in the flock increased, so does the risk of virus spillover to humans.

That's from Associate Professor Linda Houston. A thousand times a night. A thousand, mazzies bite chickens a thousand times a night. You know, maybe, maybe Nuggets is a kindness. You know, maybe Nuggets is like not that bad of a deal. Like if the alternatives, I kind of much. I mean, they don't get sick like we do, though. Like we're...

A thousand! We get sick when we get the virus. Chickens just kind of deal with it. Like their little chicken bodies just fight it off. Tough guys. They deal with it. So sentinel chickens, they were also, by the way, about the same time they were being used in the U.S. because there was an outbreak of Newcastle disease.

I don't think Nuggets is a kindness. No, please don't email. Yeah, don't email. He doesn't. There was an outbreak of Newcastle disease, which just causes illness in birds primarily. Usually is asymptomatic in humans that was traced back to imported pills. parrots. But anyway, so they started using sentinel chickens in these two cases, and by the late 70s into the 80s, there were a lot of places that started using the concept of sentinel chickens.

Let's put these flocks of disease-free chickens out to different places around the environment to get bitten by mosquitoes and we'll surveil them periodically. And what you do with that information is up to you. As I was reading, I was reading this great article from a family in New South Wales who has like a flock of sentinel chickens on their property. So they, like the kid helps raise them and like they hug these chickens and they're very sweet to these chickens and they're like and then if we find out that they're infected we can inform the public like you know use mosquito repellent watch out for standing water like you know we can let people know to take safety measures because we're seeing an increase in whatever virus they're surveilling for

um i have also found like you know and instead you could start like killing all the mosquitoes spraying for adult mosquitoes you could deploy mosquito larvae eating fish into the local waterways and kill all the mosquitoes. So I guess what you do with this information is up to your municipal government. I don't know. But it's being used at this point for multiple herbiviruses that we've mentioned, West Nile, Dengay, all kinds of things. And there are programs now in different states across the U.S. So specifically Delaware, California, Virginia, and Florida.

Oh, no. That means Disney World. I want to tell you about how this connects to Disney World now, Justin. very excited to tell you about Disney World. But first we have to go to the billing department. All right, let's go. All right, let's go. All right, Sid, we're going to go down to the dis.

Okay, as I was doing this research, I started seeing in my search terms, the word Disney tacked on to the end of them as an option. And I thought, why would I add, as I'm researching like the first use of fentanyl chickens. Why would I be asking about Disney? And it led me to this question. We've been to Disney World. Sure. Why? Have you ever been bitten by a mosquito at Disney World? I have no memory of that. Me neither. I can't. I thought to myself, hmm, I don't ever think about mosquitoes being a problem at Disney World. I'm a super tough guy though. I don't think I'd notice

individual mosquito bite. Well, but it's in Orlando, Florida. It's true. Which there are a lot of mosquitoes there, right? This is a mosquito-ridden area of the planet. Yes. So why, if you're in the middle of Orlando, Florida, are you not getting bitten by mosquitoes? There is an answer to this. Go on, Sid, tell me about it. Did you, do you already know this bit of history about Disney? No, Sidney, I don't know. It depends. You got to tell me what it is first. And then I'll tell you. Do you know who William or Joe Potter is? Do I know the general Joe Potter is? Yes, I do. The green boat that takes you from Disney to the different resorts that's called the General Joe Potter. You can remember it's green because he was in the Army.

Okay. So he was, yes, he was a retired Army Major General. And do you know what he did for Disney Parks specifically? I mean, he was very much the one who made the parks physically. There's a lot of ideas behind it, but he was the one who really, really help the ideas physically happen. He was in charge of a lot of the construction. He had overseen, I think, I want to say the Panama Canal or some work at the Panama Canal, something like that.

He was governor of the Panama Canal Zone in 1956. Radical. Yeah. Wild. He worked mainly in, like, pest management. He knew everything about mosquitoes in an environment that was fairly similar to Florida. And basically, well, Disney's, you know, plan is to build this giant, theme park and more in a swamp and more so much more city well we're a theme a simple theme park so uh it's a resort

he was he was the after he served as governor of the panama canal zone do you know how they met i don't so he was appointed executive vice president of the 1964 to 1965 new york world fair oh yeah and that's where he met walt disney makes sense yeah and apparently Walt disney was impressed with him and his history and his knowledge. And so when he began, you know, planning the Florida Park, he recruited General Joe Potter to come help him with basic engineering. Like, this is a swamp. How are we going to turn it into like solid ground?

And then also because it is a perfect place for mosquitoes, how do we make it not a perfect place for mosquitoes? So the biggest thing at Disney World are what are called, Joe's Ditches. I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't know that term. That's,

that is the canal system that keeps water from standing in the swamp land that is Disney World. Wow. And it's a series of canals that just continue to move water out of there.

Where are they? I mean, they're all over the grounds of Disney World. I don't know. The fountains are another big piece of that. So there's, and I've never thought about it, walking through various aspects of Disney World, all the, you know, the Magic Kingdom and all the Epcot everywhere. But do you notice any areas where there are giant bodies of standing water or even small pools of standing water?

I mean, obviously, like the lake and things like that. Everything is moving. There are, they have all water in the parks is moving in some way, whether there's fountains to keep it circulating, something. there are no pools of standing water anywhere throughout the Disney Park. I mean, even the lakes are getting like churned pretty regularly by a bunch of boat traffic and what have you. Yes, because standing water is where mosquitoes will lay their larva,

and then that leads to increased mosquitoes. So we know that one of the, and this is known worldwide, one of the best ways you can mitigate mosquitoes in your population is to not have pools of stagnant standing water. Because that is where mosquitoes are going to want to lay their eggs and then you're going to have baby mosquitoes and so on and so forth. So that was a big piece of it. There are other things that Disney did that, I'm not just Joe Potter,

because he did a lot of the big construction engineering, like the ditches and the canals, and knew the basic principle of standing water. But then as they engineered the rest of Disney World, they took that even further. So not only do all the water features move, the buildings are constructed in such a way that they will not allow pools of standing water to sit on them.

Everything is angled or curved. Sure, yeah, that makes sense. I mean, even if you think of the design of the not the golf ball, the geodesic dome, at Epcot, there's nowhere for water to stand on it. It's all angles. And so the architecture at Disney World is specifically made so that there will be no pools of standing water for mosquitoes to breed in, And beyond that, the plants that they grow are chosen to not have any areas where the leaves would cup and collect pools of water.

Oh my gosh. They choose plants that water will drip off of so that there's nowhere for mosquitoes to continue to breathe. And obviously, sidewalks and stuff have to be angled for, you know, maximum drainage because after it rains, they don't want those, they want those to dry out as quickly as possible. So everything in that is built and planted. and grown every water feature. I mean, obviously there's a lot of reasons, but a big piece of why they do it the way they do it is to keep standing water out of the parks

so that you aren't breeding mosquitoes in the parks. Now, beyond that, a lot of the areas where there are water are filled with those fish that I mentioned earlier that will eat mosquito larva. So if any mosquito manage to lay their eggs in the water, the fish are going to come eat them. So that's going to eliminate them. they also occasionally will release, and this is, I don't think Disney has ever actually stated this,

but there are multiple people who have like, I think like business insider. There are different groups that have done investigative reporting and probably talk to like former Disney employees who have been like, well, you want to know this one cool thing we do. They will occasionally release predatory wasps into the parks, and these wasps only eat the mosquitoes. They do not sting humans, and they are very short-lived. They have very short lifespans. Wow. And they will help eradicate any stray mosquitoes that have managed to survive in Walt's dream.

Wow, that's wild. They just send out some hunter wasps. Yes, they send out hunter wasps to stop them. They also, so you know what the smelotizer is. Smelitzer. Oh, Smelitzer? Smelitzer. Would you like to explain what the smelitzer is?

Yes, I'd love to explain the smelitzer is. So the smelitzer is like a. way of adding additional scent into Disney. So if you walk down Main Street, for example, and you see like the confectionery store, things like that, the smell of, like, candy is being piped out out of there into Main Street. So you get that smell.

And that technique is used throughout the resort, throughout their parks. And mostly these are smells that are meant to transport you, you know, through the scent memory connection to, like, a childhood time, like a candy store kind of of, or to make you feel warm and safe, to make it feel more magical, to invoke Soren uses this.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Soren uses these throughout. That's a, like a reproduction of a, like you're flying through different regions of the world. Like hang gliding. Sort of, yeah. Sometimes you're in, there's one that's just through America. There's one that's through like all the world.

There's one just through. There's one just to California. But I was going to say, the California one, that would be Disneyland. Yeah. I don't, well, did they ever do that at Disney World? They had a limited time where they did, I think, that they ran that and then returned to soren across the, it's sord around the world.

I'm not sure. But they use different smells. I think they switched to sordering across America for the 50th anniversary. Ah. For, no, sorry, the 250th anniversary for the, for America. So, so these are all ways in which it is being used to like, they're with good smells. Yes. Occasionally, allegedly, the smell at sir is also releasing tiny amounts of a garlic aroma.

so small that humans wouldn't detect it, especially with all the other scents. Garlic aroma is repellent to mosquitoes. So if you are concerned that there's a density of mosquitoes, if your other measures are not adding up, you can also release some garlic aroma via the smelitzer. Yeah, that's why if you really, really want to avoid mosquitoes, you used to be able to hang out at Pizzeria Rizzo.

And that was the place, that was the perfect place, or Pizafari. I mean, if you're a pizza farri. And finally, to bring it all back home, yes, as you may have guessed, Disney World has Sentinel Chicken Flogs. I've never seen them. That was my next journey now that I have told you about this, is to try and find someone out there.

There's a Disney fanatic who has taken a picture of a Sentinel chicken flock somewhere in Disney, right? I can't imagine they're allowed to roam the park. I mean, what if they ended up in the Animal Kingdom? No, they're not allowed to roll. You eat my lion. No, generally you keep, I mean, generally your sentinel chicken flock should be kept somewhere where they can't move around so that you can kind of control what they're exposed to. That's better experimentally. I will say that a lot of the people, especially as I was reading these articles from Australia, the people who tend to these chickens, like they are care.

These are well cared for chickens. I don't want you to feel bad for these chickens. They love these chickens. They're part of the family. Yes, yes, they have to get blood drawn. They get bit a thousand down tonight. But they love these chickens and they care for the chickens. I can't find much information on where Disney keeps their flocks of sentinel chickens,

but they do, and they do blood draws to look for the presence of disease in the local mosquito population. So that would probably be pretty bad pressed if you had an outbreak of dengue at Disney World. So that's the history of sentinel chickens. Thanks, chickens. Appreciate you. That's going to do it for this week on Sawbones. I thought I had more for chickens, but I don't feel like we all on the audience. audience, to be fair.

Especially not after I said that Nuggies was a mercy or whatever. We don't. We don't feel that way about nuggets. We don't. Thanks to the taxpayers for the use of their song, medicines is the introduction and introduction of our program. We still have some sawbone stickers in the merch store. If you get a Macquariemerch.com,

you can get stickers of our new sawbones logo designed by Matt Taylor. And that is going to do it for us for this week. I think, Sid. Yeah. Until next time. My name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney MacRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your hand.

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