So on the way to work today, I noticed a tiny little injured bird on the pavement. Not even thinking about the recent bird flu scares or my mom's constant warnings about how birds and rodents can carry tons of diseases (she's a nurse so I hear it a lot), I decided to let it climb onto my hand and I put it in the bark under a bush. I had some peanuts for a snack and left the little bird some of the smallest pieces to nibble on.
During the entire morning, I wondered how it was doing. I felt a little guilty for not having done more.
Unfortunately, during lunch, I found it had died a few feet away (took a sad lil' pic of it). I felt terrible and after lunch, I told my coworkers about it. Then came the paranoia and fear that I had infected myself with bird flu or Avian Influenza. The fear was mainly due to Greg scaring the shit out of me.
He printed out a few pages from the internet about what to do if you come across a dead bird (even though the bird wasn't "dead" when I made contact with it, I was still scared).
It pretty much said,
1. Put on gloves. Do NOT touch it with your bare hands
2. Put the dead bird in a plastic bag. Tie the bag.
3. Put that plastic bag in another bag. Do tie the bag yet.
4. Take off the gloves and place them in the outer plastic bag. Now tie the outer bag.
5. Wash your hands thoroughly.
It was a lot longer than that, but that was the jist of it.
Even now, late at night, I keep thinking twice about rubbing my eyes and whether I've washed my hands enough today. Next time something like that happens, I'll probably make the same mistake again, but I'll try to use gloves or something instead.
2 comments:
It is easy to carry a pair of latex gloves in a little resealable plastic bag or even a small plastic box attached to your keyring.
I think anyone that has first aid training should do so. However I would probably have saved the bird as well. Gloves or not.
In all honesty I would be more worried about touching a dying human being than a dying bird, bird flu is a rather new phenomenon as opposed to HIV, Hepatitus or other human diseases that we seem no closer to curing after all these years.
MERLiiN
http://www.nastynerds.com
You know, my friend who is a nurse said the same thing... that she'd rather touch a dead bird than a dead human. I'll keep that in mind if I ever come across a corpse (which I hope I never do).
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