An Invasion of Flesh-Eating Pests Will Have to Get by These Texas Cowboys

A rancher found the week-old calf in a hog trap in March. Where its tail should have been was instead a wet, black mass. Maggots squirmed at the center of the necrotized flesh, and flies dotted its periphery. “This one,” says Doug Anderson, pausing the video and pointing to one fly in particular, “is the one I was worried about.”The grisly scene on his computer’s monitor stands in horrific contrast to the framed photos of Anderson’s smiling children on the wall of his office in Rio Grande City, about forty miles northwest of McAllen. Anderson is the supervisor of field operations for the Cattle Fever Tick Eradication Program, an initiative of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.He oversees the “tick…

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