SALT LAKE CITY, UT — Tensions are running high in Salt Lake County after officials confirmed the arrival of the St. Louis Encephalitis Virus, an uninvited guest locals are already calling “the Missouri Menace.”
“We already have West Nile to deal with — we don’t need some Midwestern virus swaggering in here with its Cardinals cap and BBQ sauce,” fumed resident Karen Dillworth, swatting aggressively at the air outside her Sugar House home. “If it’s called St. Louis, then take I-70 and go back east where you came from.”
Public meetings quickly turned theatrical, with angry citizens holding signs reading “No More Imported Viruses” and “Show Me State? Show Me the Door.”
“I voted for mosquito control, not mosquito tourism,” complained Murray local Dale Perkins. “First it was Californians moving here. Now Missouri viruses? What’s next, Florida iguanas setting up Airbnbs in my backyard?”
One especially fiery resident at the town hall, Sister Elaine Porter, took the outrage further:
“Don’t you see what’s happening? Missouri never forgot. First they chased the Mormons out in the 1830s, now they’re sending weaponized mosquitoes as payback. It’s extermination 2.0!”
Health officials tried to calm nerves by explaining the virus is spread by local mosquitoes, not vengeful descendants of 19th-century Missourians, but residents weren’t buying it.
“Look, if it’s here in our mosquitoes, then those mosquitoes clearly voted to import it,” said one man, adjusting his trucker hat. “We should be building a wall around the county line. A big bug-net wall.”
In response, the virus itself issued a statement through a very confused epidemiologist: “We just wanted a change of scenery, maybe catch a Jazz game, bite a few new people. Why all the hostility?”
Officials, meanwhile, are urging residents to wear repellent, drain standing water, and stop yelling at mosquitoes, since, as one epidemiologist put it, “They don’t speak English, they speak buzz.”
