``Mama,'' his 5-year-old son, Bobby, said, tugging Stella's shirt. ``Daddy's laying on the floor.''
The illness inside Hillegass' lungs was already getting the upper hand. He'd probably gotten it from mouse droppings in a hunting cabin he had used two weeks earlier. It was too quick - and too rare - for doctors in Allentown to diagnose in time.
In death, Hillegass would become Pennsylvania's first known victim of a disease called hantavirus.
By March he would be one of two.
With two deaths confirmed in the state, the small community of scientists who study this lethal disease are turning their attention here.
They are pondering such questions as which rodents carry the virus, and where; whether other cases have gone undetected; even whether the global climate changes triggered by El Nino might help explain when and where hantavirus occurs.
The experts stress that there's no cause for panic. Hantavirus cases, as one doctor says, are less common than getting struck by lightning. At the same time, they suggest some simple steps for airing out and disinfecting any dark, closed-in space with mice around - especially in woodlands, and especially as thousands of Pennsylvanians prepare to head upstate for weekends or summer vacations.
Experts want people to know about the disease.
``It's important to get the word out there to physicians so that if they do have a case of hantavirus, they recognize it in time and don't try to treat other possible causes,'' said Joni Young, a hantavirus researcher at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. ``It helps to get the word out to the public.''
* Like AIDS and Ebola, hantavirus is known as an ``emerging infectious disease'' - one that scientists are just beginning to understand. It has killed 179 people since it was first identified in a 1993 outbreak in the Southwest.
