There have been a lot of warnings this summer, especially with birds. Most of these birds were crows and most were found in the New York City metropolitan area. But infected birds are now turning up around Upstate New York, indicating the virus is present statewide. At the urging of state health officials, counties and private citizens have been shipping dead birds for months to the state Department of Environmental Conservation's wildlife pathology lab. Stone and his small staff perform triage on the hundreds of bagged and boxed birds arriving daily.
Stone looks for West Nile symptoms like lesions on the birds' hearts or enlarged livers and spleens.
Kramer's staff performs molecular tests on the tissue for a final diagnosis. From the tight confines of a converted horse stable, Kramer's arbovirus lab receives about 200 birds a week. On top of that, tests are done each week on some 600 pools of mosquitoes shipped in on dry ice from around the state. It adds up to a lot of work. Kramer came out from California in May to head the lab and has been hustling to keep up since.