Tag: chickens

One “Flu” Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

There is something so beautiful that can carry something else that is so ugly that hundreds of millions of people have died from it.

The birds. The flu.

In all its shapes and configurations, the flu has attacked humanity for as long as humanity has existed. The ancient Greeks wrote about the wreckage flu could inflict on people. Young men, in fact, their best warriors, could sniffle on a Monday and die that Sunday.

We saw this in 1918 with the Spanish Flu. Over 50 million people, many strong, young men, our own warriors, heading not for the glory of battle but for their eternal rest from a tortuous disease. There is no glory in coughing up your life.

According to Audubon magazine, wild birds, “mostly shore birds such as Red Knots, Ruddy Turnstones, Dunlins, Semipalmated Sandpipers, Sanderlings, HerrIng Gulls, and Laughing Gulls,” among others, bring something to us other than their beauty. According to a recent study some 60 percent of birds that wend their way to Delaware Bay in the United States have some form of the flu virus.

Indeed, these birds carry some 150 different strains of the flu. Luckily, for us, only a small percentage have been shown to affect people. Still, those yearly bouts of the flu that cause aches, pains, and death, have probably come from birds, often through beloved meats such as pork and chicken, as we’ll see.

In fact, there seems to be an ancient world business practice that spews various viruses; these are called “wet markets” and they can be found throughout China.

In filthy conditions, wild animals such as bats and various species of birds, and rodents and lizards and monkeys spend their days waiting to be sold for food and also crapping on each other’s heads and through the bars of each other’s cramped cages. A great birthing ground for viruses of many types.

The greatest host of the flu are chickens but not from the Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket. No, these are home grown in Asia and eaten with exotic creatures that might turn a Westerner’s stomach inside out.

With third-world nations hungering to join the first-world, their population’s hunger for chicken dinners has increased markedly. Such growth in the chicken-eating population is a symbol and a measure of a society’s cultural growth. And with that growth comes the growth of the chicken population in those countries.

There are several vectors for in-flu-encing people. Here’s one: the virus can go from wild bird to chickens and/or bats, to pigs and then to us. Most of you reading this probably remember the fears over “swine flu” and “bird flu” from some years ago. Well, COVID-19 probably took that route from the wet markets to the world’s human immune system with devastating results for humans.

How do we stop the spread of the flu?

The first step is for the governments of the countries where wet markets thrive to close them down or, at the very least, categorize what foods they are allowed to sell and the level of cleanliness needed for proprietors, their goods, and property.

Do I think these precautions will happen in my lifetime?

No.

In fact, I think I am chirping on the wrong shore when it comes to such reforms.

[Squirrel alert: In a former column I wrote about feeding peanuts to squirrels who frequent my backyard. Stop! SSAS member Diana Ihmann got in touch with me and told me that squirrels have allergic reactions to peanuts. So, my wife the Beautiful AP, and I have stopped feeding our squirrels peanuts.]

 

Frank Scoblete’s web site is www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Kindle, e-books and at bookstores.

Bird is the Word

 

They don’t just fly over your house; they have flown into our vocabulary too. Not often for good reasons; not often for bad reasons.

In England young women are often referred to as birds. In the United States and Canada, young women are often called chicks. Women who have passed their peek are often referred to as old hens or old crows.

If someone keeps repeating something over and over we can refer to that person as a parrot. If your acquaintance is a stuck up, classless idiot, you might refer to him or her as a popinjay or a peacock.

Someone who is considered stupid is often called a bird brain. However, someone who is smart can be called a wise-old owl. But if someone is scared you call that person a chicken or chicken shit. If someone thinks of himself as sexually desirable, he pictures himself cock of the walk.

People who are crazy can be called loons or cuckoos. Or maybe they just go to Florida in the winter and are called snowbirds. Someone who uses cocaine is often called a snowbird as well. Someone who lives in Florida and also uses cocaine is called a dodo.

Throughout our country we have many supposed health experts who are really just quacks. Quacks are the magpies of medicine as they are stealing your money selling bird poop. Be an early bird and don’t let them ruffle your feathers.

If you go to quacks you’d better be eagle-eyed and watch them like a hawk so they don’t steal from you. If they do steal from you then go to the police and sing like a nightingale about their thievery. Maybe these people will be arrested and put in a birdcage so they can’t fly the coop.

The character of Mr. Potter in my favorite movie It’s a Wonderful Life was a vulture and certainly deserved the title of old coot. He was probably pigeon-toed too. He was a man who ate like a pig because he could not actually eat like a bird because, in reality, birds eat a lot! I don’t know if Mr. Potter liked to wet his beak from the expensive wines he enjoyed drinking.

I really wished George Bailey, the lead character in the movie, didn’t give a hoot about Mr. Potter but George acted like a silly goose by trying to borrow money from Mr. Potter. Yes, Mr. Potter was always feathering his nest with other people’s money. That man was a bad egg.

By the end of the movie George Bailey was flying like a bird when he found out how many friends he had and, hopefully, all the viewers truly hoped that Mr. Potter would wind up with a severe case of thrush at the end.

Frank Scoblete’s website is www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available from Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Kindle, e-books and at bookstores.