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If your pet eats too many cicadas, when should you see the vet?
HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill. (CBS) — With 17-year periodical cicadas on seemingly every outdoor surface in parts of the Chicago area, some veterinarians — even emergency vets — are getting calls to treat pets that eat too many of the insects.
Veterinarians emphasize it’s rare for a cicada-eating issue to turn into an emergency for pets. But with vets seeing such issues across the Chicago area nonetheless, experts have some advice.
Some dogs are gleefully gobbling up cicadas and their exoskeletons, explained Dr. Jennie Culen of Thrive Pet Healthcare in Hoffman Estates.
“The dogs, they basically think they’re like potato chips — they’re crunchy,” Culen said. “They eat them.”
But only the worst cases of trouble after dogs eat too cicadas end up needing treatment from vets like Culen.
“From an emergency standpoint, the worst cases that we’ve seen is like a small dog trying to swallow it and maybe choking on it,” Culen said.
Thrive Pet Healthcare, a 24/7 ER and specialty medicine center, prepared for the worst. Thankfully, the worst has not panned out.
“We haven’t had any cases where ingestion of cicadas has led to anything life-threatening,” said Culen.
Culen emphasized that cicadas are not dangerous.
“There’s a lot of things that are very scary to people, because they don’t know,” Culen said.
Cicadas are not toxic, and they do not sting or bite. But if your pet eats one, or eats a bunch and is acting off, how do you know when it’s time to call the vet?
Dustin Kammerer made the call recently to Dr. Jay Whittle in Palos Park. Both joined CBS 2 virtually Friday to talk about it.
“He was pretty lethargic, and wasn’t able to walk inside,” Kammerer said of his dog, Kona.
Thankfully, Kammerer’s sweet Kona was treated, and was doing OK late Friday. Kona just ate a few too many cicadas.
“He should be fine,” said Dr. Whittle, of Mill Creek Animal Clinic. “He seems like he’s perked up a lot.”
Dr. Culen says she’d always prefer pet parents err on the side of caution, and make the call if they’re worried. But here are the signs to look for as cicada season peaks.
“One episode of vomiting, I wouldn’t worry — especially as long as they’re still eating,” Culen said. “If they’re vomiting multiple times, if they’re not eating, if they seem really painful — those would all be signs to me to go see either your primary care vet if they’re open. If not, there are a bunch of urgent cares.”
The new Department of Government Efficiency, a group created by President-elect Donald Trump with the task of identifying ways to cut federal spending and headed by billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, is already taking resumes.
The request for job applicants was posted Thursday by the new X account for DOGE, which despite its heady mission isn’t an official government department. In his statement on Tuesday announcing the effort, Trump described Musk and Ramaswamy’s role as providing “advice and guidance from outside of government.”
It’s unclear where the funding for DOGE will come from or the size of its budget, as well as whether Musk, the world’s richest person, and Ramaswamy, who has an estimated net worth of $1 billion, will be paid for their efforts. The Trump campaign didn’t respond to a request for information.
In the meantime, DOGE is starting to hire, according to the post on X, the social media service (formerly known as Twitter) owned by Musk. The account already has 1.2 million followers on the platform.
What qualifications is DOGE looking for?
The post didn’t disclose the specific educational or career experience it is looking for in applicants. Instead, it described the kind of person they want to hire: “We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.”
It added that it doesn’t want “more part-time idea generators.”
How can people apply for a DOGE job?
The post said that interested applicants should send a direct message, or DM, to the account with their CV, although the DOGE account wasn’t open to messages when the job notice was first posted.
“Off to a great start. ‘DM this account with an application’,” one person pointed out. “DMs not open.”
Even after the DOGE account opened to direct messages, not all X users could send their resumes because only verified accounts or accounts followed by DOGE are able to DM the account. The DOGE account currently doesn’t follow any other X users, and verification on the platform costs $84 a year.
Only the “top 1% of applicants” will be reviewed by Musk and Ramaswamy, the DOGE account added. The post didn’t specify how it will rank applicants.
What does a DOGE job pay?
The post didn’t specify the salary range or benefits.
What kind of response is the post receiving?
A mix of pointed questions, humor as well as support from fans of Musk and Trump.
“Anything over 40 hours will be paid overtime right?” one person posted on X in response to the job post.
Others posted tongue-in-cheek “qualifications,” with one person writing, “I’d love to join here’s my resume: – B+ in Science – JV soccer team (2 years) – Can eat >10 Oreos in one sitting – Owner of several Dogecoins – Can burp the alphabet – Can run fast (top 25% of class).”
Another touted his “104 IQ (4 points above highest score possible).”
Valentina Gomez, a Republican politician who posted a video of herself burning books in February, responded, “But I’m ready to cut & make a dent on that outstanding budget. TSI, IRS, ATF are the first to go.”
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The Pentagon office investigating reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena, the government’s term for UFOs, received 21 reports last year that contain enough data for the intelligence community to continue actively investigating.
The majority of the reports the office received described orbs, lights, cylinders, but about 4% fell into the category of “other” and included unique descriptions like “green fireball,” “a jelly fish with [multicolored] flashing lights” or a “silver rocket approximately six feet long.”
“There are interesting cases that with my physics and engineering background and time in the [intelligence community], I do not understand, and I don’t know anybody else understands them,” Dr. Jon Kosloski, director, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) told reporters during a briefing on the unclassified version of the annual report mandated by Congress.
Kosloski said the office has found “no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technologies,” and he said none of the cases point to foreign adversaries or breakthrough technologies.
In total, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office received 757 reports of UAP between May 1, 2023 and June 1, 2024. Of the 757 received, 485 occurred during that time period, while 272 occurred outside of the reporting period but were not included in previous reports.
The office resolved 49 of the cases by identifying the object as various types of balloons, birds or drones, and it expects to resolve 243 others by identifying them as one of those objects, as well.
Another 444 didn’t have enough data to keep investigating, so the office will go into the its active archive to see if other data can be found.
Twenty-one merit further analysis, and these cases Kosloski found interesting because they correspond with the typical shapes the office receives reports on, like orbs, triangles, and cylinders, and at least “one of those cases has been happening for an extended period of time.”
Kosloski acknowledged that even though investigators have not identified any of the cases as breakthrough technologies, the office can’t rule it out.
“We’re open to that as an explanation for it, but we’re just not attributing breakthrough technology as the explanation to it,” Kosloski said. “An open mind works both ways. So if we don’t understand what it is, we can’t say that it is or it is not breakthrough technology.”
The AARO expects to soon release the second volume of the U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena detailing the government’s investigatory efforts from November 2023 to April 2024. The first volume released earlier this year looked at efforts from 1945 to 2023.
