A twist of lemming

Must credit Gilbert of the Respectful Insolence commentariat for bringing this story to Riddled attention. Given their size, skwirl brains are never going to be a major part of anyone's diet, but people were consuming them for culinary and regional-identity reasons, and there were concerns that this could cause brain-rot prion disease and late-stage voting for Mike Huckabee. It is old news (i.e. 1997) but still of interest to the large sector of our readers who have issues with skwirls, or brains, or both.

Doctors in Kentucky have issued a warning that people should not eat squirrel brains, a regional delicacy, because squirrels may carry a variant of mad cow disease that can be transmitted to humans and is fatal.

Although no squirrels have been tested for mad squirrel disease, there is reason to believe that they could be infected, said Dr. Joseph Berger, chairman of the neurology department at the University of Kentucky in Lexington [...]

In the last four years, 11 cases of a human form of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, have been diagnosed in rural western Kentucky, said Dr. Erick Weisman, clinical director of the Neurobehavioral Institute in Hartford, Ky., where the patients were treated.

"All of them were squirrel-brain eaters," Dr. Weisman said. Of the 11 patients, at least 6 have died.

The numbers were shaky: in their press report the authors cited 11 cases, but in the original paper, they had investigated all five cases. Then two decades went by without further reports or direct observation of skwirls with CJD. But let us not lobby Retraction Watch to have the paper unpublished, for it provides an excuse for a Beatrix Potter / Zombie cross-over -- a genre monopolised by Riddled.
On the sixth day, which was Saturday, the squirrels came again for the last time; they brought a fresh skull in a little rush basket as a last parting present for Zombie Owl.

But Nutkin ran in front laughing, and shouting—

Now old Brown Zombie took an interest in brainzz; he opened one eye and shut it again. But still he did not speak.
Nutkin became more and more impertinent—
"Old Mr. Z! Old Mr. Z!
Nutkin shambled up and down like a dead thing; but still Zombie Owl said nothing at all.

Nutkin began again—

Nutkin made a whirring noise to sound like a groan, and he took a running jump right onto the head of Zombie Owl!...

Then all at once there was a flutterment and a scufflement and a loud "BRAINZZZ"

The other squirrels scuttered away into the bushes.