By Heather Schlitz and Cassandra Garrison

LIVE OAK COUNTY, Texas/TAPACHULA, Mexico/PANAMA CITY (Reuters) -He was only eight years old in 1973, but fifth-generation Texas rancher Kip Dove remembers spending countless days trotting up to sick and dying cattle on horseback that year during the last major outbreak of flesh-eating screwworm. He carried a bottle of foul-smelling, tar-like medicine in his saddlebag and a holstered revolver to shoot any animals too far gone to treat.

Surrounded by baying cattle dogs and cowboys, the infested cattle kicked and bit at their open wounds, staring wild-eyed at the truck headlights illuminating them and giving off the unmistakable smell of rotting flesh, he recalls.

Now surrounded by a healthy herd of longhorn cattle, Dove is anticipating the return

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