The list of things that can kill me in the country grows ever longer.

Out in Rappahannock County, the latest rage is “alpha-gal syndrome,” a tick-borne illness that joins Rocky Mountain spotted fever, tularemia and the O.G. infection, Lyme Disease. Alpha-gal, which can be spread by ticks no bigger than a poppy seed, causes people to develop severe allergies to mammalian meat.

University of Virginia researchers in November identified alpha-gal as the culprit in the case of a New Jersey man who died after eating a hamburger — and alpha-gal is the prime suspect in other deaths. Several friends out here already have alpha-gal, and a local restaurant has started offering an “Alpha-Gal Wrap,” with chicken. I now keep an Epi-Pen in the house, just in case somebody who unknowingly harbors alpha-gal bites into a lamb chop or a cut of venison.

Deer meat is becoming more dangerous here for another reason too: the spread of chronic wasting disease, transmitted by mysterious infectious particles called prions. I get my venison tested by the state, but we know so little about transmission of the disease that I can’t be sure my brain won’t start to ]jrtfn v7kn4xst lw;ike/k.

I have to keep salmonella and histoplasmosis in mind when I clean out my bird boxes and feeders, mostly because the invasive European starlings poop on everything. And locals tell me that even routine things such as bee stings and poison ivy can become debilitating with repeated exposure. I keep my distance from the huge bald-faced hornet nest down by the river and cover just about every inch of skin when working outside.

Now even the mice are apparently trying to kill me. Rodents vastly outnumber us, here and everywhere, of course: groundhogs in the barn, voles tunneling in the septic field and trying to undermine the driveway — and mice making themselves at home in the crawl space under the house. I have elaborate mouse-proofing measures in place, but rodents inevitably outwit humans, and a few weeks ago I had to trap and evict half a dozen of them that had evaded my defenses.

I wore gloves when I removed them and a face mask when I thought I’d be disturbing mouse droppings, to protect myself from whatever nasty things the mice carry. But I also spent time in that crawl space without gloves and mask and didn’t think anything of it — until alarming reports about the hantavirus cruise ship became top of the news.

Concerned about my mouse exposure, and the long incubation period for hantavirus, I consulted Dr. Claude. The A.I. engine informed me that:

1. The strain of hantavirus in Virginia, “Sin Nombre,” is particularly deadly.

2. More mice carry hantavirus in Virginia than in any other state.

3. I could get it just from being in the same space as mice.

4. I almost certainly have hantavirus.

5. There is a 40% likelihood I am going to die.

6. I should find a hospital with a machine called an ECMO that will breathe for me and circulate my blood.

This didn’t seem to add up, because mice are omnipresent in Virginia, and yet there have been only two confirmed cases in the last 33 years. Either Claude was hallucinating or I was doomed.

I checked with my real doctor (he’s well accustomed to such exotic queries from me) and he saw no reason to take action.

So what was Claude on about? Geeta Sood, an infectious disease specialist with Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, explained that while hantavirus is a theoretical possibility on the East Coast, it just isn’t a thing here the way it is in certain western states — and incidents are not rising. At Hopkins, she said, “I don’t think anybody has ever seen or treated a case.”

And if by some stroke of outrageously bad luck I wound up being Patient No. 3, she said I could knock on her door and ask to borrow the ECMO machine.

I’ve gone back to worrying about alpha-gal.

***

The common factor connecting many of these spreading microbiological menaces of the countryside, you won’t be surprised to hear, is climate change. Warmer weather, particularly in winter, is allowing ticks to move north and increase their populations. Researchers think it could contribute to the spread of chronic wasting disease. It’s also blamed for the spread of hantavirus in Argentina.

But you don’t need a microscope to see the damage here in Rappahannock. In this bone-dry spring following a brutal winter, the climate is front-page stuff for the Rappahannock News. “Mother Nature has been especially unkind to Rappahannock County,” the paper reports.

It’s true. The drought that afflicts much of the southeast is severe in this region, and worsening. On top of that, a couple of late freezes killed just-emerged leaves and blossoms. Local vineyards and orchards fear that their entire crops will be wiped out.

On my farm, there are no financial consequences, because the only things I’m cultivating are native plants. But I can feel nature’s pain.

The sycamores lost all their leaves, and their bare branches are struggling to re-bud. The tender leaves on the pawpaws I planted turned black and shriveled — as did the leaves on the experimental white ash and American chestnut I’m trying to grow.

I fear the worst for the 1,400 tree and bush seedlings that were planted on my land during the fall using funds from the Culpeper Soil and Water Conservation District. The fate of 35 white oak seedlings I planted a couple of weeks ago is likewise in doubt.

This seems to be the new normal in our changing climate. Since my wife and I bought the place in 2022, drought has been a routine lament. The rivers are down to trickles, the earth is cracked, vernal pools have dried up before the amphibian eggs could hatch.

My first clutch of bluebirds this season produced 19 fledglings and several eggs that didn’t hatch; last year, more than 25 had fledged by this point. It’s hard to say what the cause is, but I blame the concrete-like snow that covered the ground for weeks — and, of course, the drought.

For most of the land, I can’t do much but pray for rain and watch my weather apps obsessively. When rain is expected, I refresh RadarScope every few minutes, watching cells develop and hoping the splotches of red or at least yellow will pass over my land in Sperryville. It seems they’re always passing to the south, over Madison, or to the north, over Winchester, but that could be my imagination.

Once the rain starts falling, I keep my eyes glued to the app for my home rain gauge and celebrate every 100th of an inch. When I went to bed one night with the gauge showing 0.12 inches and awakened the next morning to 0.67 inches, I let out a cheer, as when I was a kid and awakened to learn the Mets had rallied in the bottom of the 9th after I turned the game off.

Following this past Wednesday’s rain, I checked the box scores:

Madison: 0.54 inches.

Winchester: 0.54 inches.

My house: 0.27 inches.

I was robbed!

Weather is my new sport, and I’m not just a fan; I’m an active player. Everything within 150 feet of my house — the length of my garden hose — gets artificial life support, at least for its first season or two in the ground. This spring I planted hundreds of flowering plants on the slopes along the driveway: short-toothed mountain mint, shrubby St.-John’s-wort, ninebark, blue hyssop, calico beardtongue. They will be beautiful — if they survive the drought.

I watered them religiously at first with an oscillating sprinkler but found that the water pressure collapsed after just an hour. I called in Aquaman, the local well specialist, and he upgraded my pressure tank. But the same thing kept happening. It seemed my well was quite literally running dry after 450 gallons and needed to recharge.

So instead I’ve been watering each plant by hand with a wand sprayer — a two-hour process that I’ve begun as early as 5:30 a.m. It’s easier on the well, but a lot harder on me.

***

There’s plenty to get depressed about when I look out on the parched landscape while I’m draining my well to keep these plants alive. Yet these hours of solitude have had the opposite effect. I’m seeing how much life remains, how nature finds a way to endure.

The indigo buntings have returned, singing to me while I water: cheap cheap, penny penny, cheap cheap. My usual white-eyed vireos have been joined this year by their yellow-throated cousin, with its richer call. A blue grosbeak keeps announcing his presence, a hopeful sign that a pair will be nesting near the house this year. And purple martins have made an appearance for the first time, though starlings have hijacked the gourds I put up for them. (The starling traps I ordered have just arrived.)

One morning, watering wand in hand, I looked up to see that I was being observed by a tree swallow perched on a maple branch. He was stunning, with a dark blue back and pure white breast — and to my delight he left the branch, circled my last unoccupied nest box, and slipped in. At last check, there were two tree-swallow eggs inside, in a luxurious, white-feathered nest.

By day, the bumblebees (even the struggling Bombus pensylvanicus) and the butterflies (swallowtails, mostly) seem plentiful this year, defying the harsh conditions. By night, the fireflies (spring treetop flashers, I think) twinkle in greater numbers than I’ve seen before, making fields sparkle as far as I can see.

The abundance fills me with pleasure. Despite the drought, despite the freezes, despite my many mistakes, something is going right on the farm. It suggests we can, at least in small ways, ameliorate the ravages of climate change. I’ve rebuilt native habitat, and the critters are responding. Surrounded by them, I feel more alive — no matter what Dr. Claude thinks.

Dana Milbank recently joined NOTUS after 26 years at The Washington Post.