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ONE FOR THE BIRDS …
BY PETER KURTH (published 11.09.05)
On the whole, my sympathies
are entirely with the birds. You
know, that “flu” thing.
There was a big story not
long ago in the local daily about the menace posed by the pigeons that make
(or made) their home on the roof of Chittenden Superior Court on Main
Street in Burlington. I can’t
remember all the details, except that the pigeons were a problem, and that
“measures” had to be taken to make sure they didn’t roost
there anymore. “Spikes and
netting” were mentioned, along with a specific description of pigeons
as “undesirables.”
At all costs, the story said,
these creatures must be gotten rid of, on account of the “mess”
they make, the “health hazard” they pose, and the inconvenience
that “business” people, going in and out of the building, need
to cope with on their way to making $200K a year, at the same time worrying
that some pigeon might shit on their padded shoulders.
It gets worse. According to the latest reports, the
Amazon rain forest is decreasing “two-thirds faster” than we
already supposed, which was plenty.
The “weather” isn’t what it used to be anywhere in
the world. Thanks to the craven
acquiescence of Democrats in Congress, Dick Cheney and his gang are about
to start drilling for oil in the Alaskan wilderness. And in California, they’re
“reassigning” more than three million acres of “critical
habitat” that the red-legged frog relies on for its survival.
Why? In order to build a million more junky
“homes,” which few can afford, and which will fall into the sea
when the place finally collapses. As
it will – make no mistake.
Next year is the centenary of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906,
when the “insurers” did to San Franciscans what they’re
now doing – exactly – to the washed-out citizens of New
Orleans: “Well, you’ve
got earthquake [or, let’s say, “hurricane”] insurance,
and we’ll cover you for that.
But the fires [or floods] that followed aren’t mentioned in
our contract. You’re on your
own.”
As it happens, the
“red-legged frog” is the one that Mark Twain wrote about in
“The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," a classic of American
literature that used to be taught in the schools, when they still taught
things in schools – rather than just “testing” children
to see if they can turn on a computer and push the right button to get
their sports scores. It’s also
worth recalling that pigeons used to get the mail delivered on time. Of course, these were
“carrier” pigeons. But
imagine that -- the mail being delivered on time, I mean.
We shouldn’t go back
very far into this, because if we do, we’re going to remember that
there was a time when the earth worked its own torments into balance
without regard to our sensibilities – that the Earth, indeed, is a
living organism. Its birds and seas
and skies are going to defeat us in the end, before we’re through
trying to defeat them. “The
microbe is where it’s at,” as my scientist sister says, and it
won’t matter how many “vaccines” we come up with –
it will always be so. Every doctor
knows this.
During the last
“flu” pandemic of 1918, nearly 50 million people died –
twice as many as had already been killed in World War I. That, of course, was “the War to
End Wars,” which amounted to nothing but a lot of shooting from the
trenches and led, as we know, to the next war. And the one after that. Nothing was solved. And still we imagine that we know what we’re
doing.
Who decided, anyway, that a
man’s life is worth more than a bird’s or a frog’s? I would pose that question to
“Christians,” given how much they love the line in the New
Testament (Matthew 6:26) about “the fowls of the air: for they sow
not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father
feedeth them.”
Or maybe you feedeth
them. Maybe you actually throw them
bread crumbs and popcorn from time to time to keep them from starving. But I doubt it. Mainly, it would make you look like a bag
lady, and we can’t have that.
Just don’t pull Scripture on me, because I have it all under
my belt. Psalm 84:
Yea, the sparrow hath found a house,
and the swallow a
nest for herself,
where she may lay her young …
I wanted to get through this
thing without mentioning George W. Bush, but unfortunately that’s not
possible, given the speech he delivered the other day regarding “bird
flu” and its threats:
“If a super-flu begins spreading here, states and cities will
have to ration scarce medications and triage panicked patients to prevent
them from overwhelming hospitals and spreading infection inside emergency
rooms.”
Nobody asked Ding-Dong to
explain “triage” -- again, you’re on your own. Bush is willing to throw $7.1 billion at
the bird problem. Where he’ll
get it, we don't know. But since
he’s the ultimate credit-card president, paying no attention to the
bills that will eventually come due, you can be sure that the money will be
taken from the funds that allow you to eat and heat your house in
winter. And then you’ll really know what bird flu means.
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