THE PORTLAND PRESS HERALD

Though both Eastern equine encephalitis and West Nile virus have been found in the small York County community of Lebanon, most residents are taking the threat of the diseases in stride.

The state’s first confirmed cases of EEE caused the deaths of 30 ringneck pheasants last Thursday on an undisclosed farm in Lebanon. State health officials informed the town’s selectmen Friday, and they alerted residents Monday.

The arrival of the virus “sounds alarming to people,” said Maine State Epidemiologist Dr. Stephen Sears. “We have a lot of mosquitoes in Maine in September. Everyone should be aware, but it is not time to be afraid.”

“All you can do is hope for the best,” said Dave Page, who with his wife, Betty, has lived Lebanon for nearly a half-century. “I’ve worried about it for years,” he said Tuesday afternoon, as he tended to the lush rows of his wife’s flower beds of zinnias, dahlias and sunflowers. She was busy out back, working rows and rows of bush beans.

“I’ve been worried about (the virus) for years,” Page confided. A neighbor lost a horse to EEE several years ago, he said, and the husband of “a real nice young couple” in town had been diagnosed with an insect-borne disease that caused neurological damage from which he has continued to suffer for two years.

“It’s sad, the way things are going,” Page said of the pheasants’ deaths from EEE and positive West Nile findings in mosquito surveillance pools from Lebanon to Gorham and Standish, farther north. “Every day is a challenge.”

All the same, he said, he and his wife think they “live in the most beautiful place in the world. We have been so blessed.”

Page — like many other residents in Lebanon — wasn’t just putting a good face on things. Despite the recent alarming reports about the two viruses hitting so close to home, Page is philosophical, and hopeful. He was out gardening, wearing a big straw hat for sun protection but not so much as a speck of insect repellent on him.

“Mosquitoes?” he shrugged. “We have tons of butterflies and dragonflies … and a couple of bats.” He’s convinced they’ll do the trick.

Both Page and his wife admitted that they were disturbed to hear this week’s EEE report. They’ve found a couple of finches dead on their property this summer, and the juxtaposition of the pheasants and finches for them was disquieting.

Birds — particularly game birds, such as the infected pheasants in Lebanon — are “highly susceptible” to the viruses, Sears said.

The birds can suffer fatal infection “because they’re so close to each other” in cages “and they can transmit to each other through pecking (order) behavior” that may result in small cuts or scratches. Blood carries the viral infections.

“We know it’s in the birds,” Sears said. The recent EEE infections had shown up in the same area where West Nile had been found earlier in August, Sears sad.

However, nothing could put a damper on the glorious afternoon Tuesday — sunny and cool, with a light wind — all of which lent a distinctly “Anne of Green Gables” look to the rows and rows of vibrant flowers, cabbages and pumpkins thriving amid evergreen bushes out front of the Page house. The couple had set up a small roadside stand, where Betty was selling the first corn of the season, two ears for $1.

Nearby, Garrett Paulino, 22, and Justin Fitton, 21, both of Lebanon, were out jogging “a couple of miles” for some exercise, they chimed together. Fitton said he was “somewhat concerned” about reports of EEE, but Paulino shrugged off the threat. Neither had used insect repellent before leaving home; being on the move was going to have to be enough.

Down the road at the Hanson Elementary, the school day was winding down and Stephanie Richard was just arriving with son Brady, 4, and daughter Audrey, 9 months, to pick up her 8-year-old daughter, Emma, now in third grade. She wasn’t thinking about EEE or West Nile; she had her hands full with her brood.

“Although my brother …” she said, her voice trailing off. She was waiting for word of the condition of her sibling Adam Herson of Wakefield, N.H., who is being treated for a suspected infection of West Nile virus.

“Yeah,” Richard said, raising an eyebrow, the concern registering in her face, as she hurried off.

It was — like the unexplained finches — one of the subtle signs that the viruses, which have hit the rest of New England harder than Maine, have rippling effects that now extend into southern Maine.

“You do the best you can,” said Tammy Baxter, director of operations at Goodall Hospital in nearby Sanford, as she herded her 5-year-old daughter, Jenna, into their car. “It’s no different” than other commonplace risks that require specific precautions, she said. “Like a tick.”

Hanson stands side by side with Lebanon Elementary School, the two properties separated only by a short footbridge over a small creek bordered by a thicket. It’s the kind of prime mosquito-breeding habitat — swamps and wetlands — common in the sprawling rural town of about 4,000.

But the easygoing atmosphere and clockwork routine of the afternoon — minivans and four-wheel-drive vehicles lining up along with school buses to ferry students home — reflected the sense of calm residents here seem genuinely to feel.

“In general, it’s been pretty good here,” said principal Tom Ledue. Already this semester, teachers have been required to provide age-appropriate lessons about the viruses and ways to prevent mosquito bites. “And we’re encouraging parents to talk to their children,” he said, to provide information and address any fears that might arise.

The intent is to “not put kids into a state of panic,” Ledue said, but to demonstrate “the reality of the risk (and) put it in perspective.”

“There are far greater risks we face every day,” he said. Each of the viruses “looks scary and … is a real thing; but in any given year, the flu is going to be a greater risk to them.”

Lebanon school officials late last month decided on what Ledue called “a prudent plan” to have the margins of the school properties and playgrounds sprayed with a herbal pesticide after mosquitoes in a monitoring pool in town turned up positive for West Nile.

But the 30 or so children out for Tuesday afternoon recess were interested only in romping around for a few minutes, except for two single-file lines of students — who had not paid attention or followed rules earlier in the day — who were suffering the brief ignominy of standing still while their classmates played.

The mood teachers and other school personnel are trying to create, Ledue said, is to “be really calm and objective, to educate our kids but not scare them. They don’t need to be afraid of going outside.”

While EEE can be transmitted to people and has been a human health issue, most recently in three Massachusetts cases, in Maine “the biggest concern is horses” (and) “reminding people that they should vaccinate their horses,” Sears said.

“It’s of concern,” he acknowledged, “but it’s something we’ve seen in Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. We’re going to continue to test” and monitor sites around the state, he said, at least through the end of September, or until the first few hard frosts suppress the mosquito population.