Mary: Wardang Island

Josh, based on where you left off, I assumed you would want me to call Wardang Island and look into it further. After settling back in at the house this evening (Josh is right, by the way. The time-stamps at the bottom of the posts are way off. It is still the same day as when I posted last) and finding Mrs. Howland's doctor tending to her, I brewed a cup of coffee and began making telephone calls from the office-area I've been using.

Port Victoria is seventeen hours ahead of us, so it was actually a perfect time for me to call, as it would be one in the afternoon there. I knew that getting through to someone with the information we needed was going to be difficult, especially cold-calling like this, but I was prepared to spend the night on the phone.

(Wardang Island-aerial view. Just two miles across and four or so miles top to bottom.)

It was a good thing that I steeled myself for a long ordeal in advance, because even acquiring a telephone number on Wardang Island itself was a chore. Finally, after three hours of sifting through Internet records and numerous, confusing, accent and dialect-riddled anecdotes (of which I'll spare you), I finally got through to Professor Sandra Liddel, the last person in charge of the Rabbit Calcivirus Project. Though now retired, Sandra was extremely generous and forthcoming, albeit less than thrilled at how the Wardang Island experiment concluded.

"We used every precaution you can think of, believe me. The official reports that came out after the fact were all over the map with explanations. One said that we underestimated the wind-borne radius of the disease, which was utter bunk. Another had the virus transmitted via insect, which I suppose was the most probable hypothesis, though we protected against that, too. A third report even had a rabbit escaping and swimming all the way to the mainland. Swimming!" she snorted. She continued more solemnly, "We took the quarantine seriously. Anyone who says we were overconfident simply didn't see the care we took over our work. Fact is, no one knows how the virus got out to this day."

Getting to my main question, I asked, "Is there any way to tell where a rabbit that's been infected is from? Are there different strains and such?"

"For the most part, the virus is fairly consistent. There is a new strain of RHDV called RHDVa. There was an outbreak of that in Italy, two in France, one in Hungary in 2003-"

"No, it's definitely not RHDVa," I said, ruffling through the autopsy copies. "Any way to tell beyond that?"

I could hear Sandra give a deep sigh, then say, "I'm out of the game, Mary. I would have neither the lab access nor the expertise to investigate sub-strains in that fashion. You could always try to go through the Australian government proper, but you'd better be prepared for a long, long, bureaucratic wait." After telling her that we have a definite time-crunch, she sighed again and said, "With Wardang Island... I was only the director after the virus had escaped. I ran clean-up, that's all. The director-the architect of the entire project was Doctor Shigekazu Yoshida. He might be able to take a sample, name you a sub-strain and point you in the direction of a region." She gave me his telephone number in Japan and said, "Last I heard, he was heading up a private research firm out of Kyoto. He would still have access to the equipment he would need to run tests."

After thanking Professor Liddel profusely, she said with more than a touch of bitterness, "Good luck, dearie. Frankly, if I were you I would go through the government and just be patient. I doubt much of anything will convince Yoshida to help you, though a good deal of money might."

I hung up and shuffled tiredly up the staircase to bed. I was relieved to see that the light was off in Mrs. Howland's room as I was sure she badly needed the rest. As Japan is twenty-one hours ahead, I would wait until tomorrow afternoon to call Doctor Yoshida.