100 years ago in Spokane: Former Harrington mayor died from tick bite

From our archives, 100 years ago

A.C. Billings, 54, former mayor of Harrington, died from a most unusual cause: a tick bite.

Billings was fishing on Crab Creek two weeks earlier when he was bitten by a tick. He did not discover the tick until a week later, after it had burrowed into his navel. He removed the tick, but the head remained embedded.

He became seriously ill and went to a Spokane doctor, who discovered that gangrene had set in. The head of the tick was found and removed, “but the poison could not be checked.”

His condition worsened and at least 20 doctors were called in to observe and advise. None of them could do anything for Billings, and he died several days later at Sacred Heart Hospital.

The doctors declared that it was one of the first tick deaths ever recorded west of the Rocky Mountains. They remained baffled by the case, since it did not resemble the “spotted fever” often caused by ticks in Montana.

From the electrocution beat: Harrington was also the site of another unusual event. A boy was riding his saddle pony past an electric light pole near the harvester factory. Apparently there was a short in the electric wire, and when the pony stepped into the muddy ground next to the pole, the animal suddenly shot up into the air, due to a violent shock.

The pony died within 10 minutes, but the boy was unharmed because “the saddle evidently saved the boy.”