Benito watched the brome grass sway in the wind as he & Todd drove along the ridge line down to the swamp to check the mosquito trap. Benito had come to Montana in 2002 to help Todd (an older rancher) on his sheep ranch. His main job was to keep the coyotes away and keep the fence up, but today they were checking one of the mosquito traps to send back to Steve Hammond, a University professor in Western Montana. West Nile had just been discovered in a horse and Steve was taking samples from around the state to see where the virus was spreading. Steve had been pretty concerned about a lot of horses dying from it so Benito asked him if sheep could get it. Steve told him how they had injected a sheep with the virus and nothing happened so sheep were immune to it. (see genome article)
