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  "path": "/welcome-screwworms-make-yourself-at-home",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-10T18:04:33.000Z",
  "site": "https://defector.com",
  "tags": [
    "Animals",
    "Creaturefector",
    "flies",
    "i hate it here",
    "parasites",
    "screwworm",
    "tfw you and your buddy are watching fly sex when you come up with a billion-dollar idea",
    "worms",
    "predicted",
    "escaped containment",
    "tweeted",
    "USAID",
    "USDA funding",
    "mucous membranes"
  ],
  "textContent": "The screwworms are here, as we predicted they would be. More than half a century after the parasitic pest was declared eradicated, the insects have escaped containment in South America and made it all the way to Texas, where they have not been seen since 1966. There are now five cases of the flesh-eating parasite in the United States, all confirmed in under a week. The first two were in calves in Zavala County, followed soon after by a calf in La Salle County; a goat in Gillespie County; and a dog that lives in Lea County, N.M., but recently traveled through Texas. These five cases are alarming but expected, as Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins tweeted. On this fact, Rollins is correct.\n\nBut expected is different from inevitable. The screwworm's arrival was expected because over the past few years the insects have been wriggling toward our border with Mexico, somehow surging past the boundary of Panama's Darién Gap. This boundary was enforced by the Sterile Insect Technique, in which hordes of engineered and irradiated sterile males kept the flies at bay. Rollins blamed the screwworm's reappearance on \"the open-border policies of the last administration,\" which is incorrect and obviously racist. There is no evidence that human migration has helped the screwworm's sprawl. If there is blame to assign, it should be directed at the Trump administration, which helped pave the screwworm's path up north. The DOGE cuts in the spring of 2025 terminated USAID funding for a program that monitored and contained the screwworm in Central America and USDA funding that supported screwworm outbreak investigations and responses in 22 countries. After Joe Biden closed southern ports of entry to live cattle from Mexico to box out the screwworm in 2024, Donald Trump reopened those ports in February 2025. (The ports were closed again later that May.)\n\nThe New World screwworm is a maggot, specifically the larvae of a parasitic blowfly that feeds on warm-blooded animals. But while most maggots feed on dead flesh, the screwworm only feeds on fresh wounds. So while other flies are content with carcasses, dung, and things of that nature, screwworms often seek out broken skin on living animals. But they'll also, horribly, lay their eggs on mucous membranes, including eyes, lips, or even an anus or vagina. Females lay their eggs inside the open flesh, eggs that hatch into larvae that gnaw and burrow into their host's skin.",
  "title": "Welcome, Screwworms! Make Yourself At Home"
}