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Hey guys! What’s up? My name is
Francisella tularensi. I am a
gram-negative, facultative
intracellular bacterium. When I
enter your body, I cause a
disease called Tularemia. A lot of
times I’ve heard you calling it
rabbit fever or deerfly fever.
It’s called Tularemia. There is a
magnified picture of me!
So how do I get inside of you? See
those guys over there? Mr. Flea,
Mr. Mosquito, and Ms. Tick.
They’re great guys. They help me
get inside you. Just one bite of an
infected tick, flea or mosquito or
direct contact with an infected
animal or its dead body allows me to
enter inside of you. Unfortunately,
I’m not contagious, but I can
sometimes enter you through
contaminated food and water,
although I rarely do so.
So, now I’m in you. What
next? Well, you guys don’t
even know I’m there until
you start getting…what do
call those…symptoms? I call
them damage. You get chills,
a fever, a headache, joint
stiffness, muscle pains,
shortness of breath, and you
get red spots on the skin,
which enlarge to sores and
ulcers. Wanna see some pics?
Tularemia causes you to get
red spots on the skin, which
get larger and into ulcers.
Here’s what it looks like…
Scared? Relax, you eventually
get rid of me…
Often times, you humans are
smart enough to go to the
doctor and the fact that I’m in
your body is detected. Some
methods of being diagnosed are:
Blood culture for tularemia
Serology for tularemia (blood
test measuring the body's
immune response to the
infection)
Chest x-ray
Polymerase chain reaction
(PCR) test of a sample from an
ulcer
Tularemia is rare, and therefore not
many individuals are unlucky enough
to have me visit them. When I do,
though, antibiotics are used to
treat the infection. Some of the
antibiotics that are used include
streptomycin, tetracycline, and
chloramphenicol. If you’re still
scared, you can go get a vaccine,
although usually it is people like
trappers, hunters and laboratory
workers that get these vaccines.
Bye! Hope to never see me again! 
Google Health. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Jan. 2010.
<https://health.google.com/health/ref/Tularemia>.
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<http://images.google.com>.
USNews. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Jan. 2010.
<http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/articles/060329/29hhs_tula
remia.htm>.
UTMB Healthcare Epidemiology. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Jan. 2010.
<http://www.utmb.edu/hce/BioterrorismPlan/Tularemia/index.htm>.
Wikipedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Jan. 2010.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisella_tularensis>.