Some people are likely to formulate a simple strategy for bird flu. Get rid of the birds. Here's a cautionary tale:
An attempt to control pigeons at a hospital escalated into a hazardous material incident as sick and dying birds falling from the sky forced a temporary shutdown of the emergency room.
"Birds were coming down like dive bombers," said Schenectady Fire Chief Robert Farstad.
There were no reports of illness or injury from the incident Thursday evening at Ellis Hospital, but several people went through decontamination after emergency crews discovered the poisoned birds.
The hospital had brought in an exterminator to use the pesticide Avitrol to reduce the pigeon population on the roof. The chemical is designed to poison a few birds, whose distress calls would then drive off other members of a flock.
Instead, more than two dozen pigeons were affected and emergency workers spent hours searching the hospital grounds, putting dead birds in red hazardous waste bags. (WIBC, Schenectady)
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Ah, Schenectady...
I drive by Ellis Hospital on my way to work. And I have an appointment there tomorrow afternoon.
Fun, fun, fun.
A direct quote from
http://members.aol.com/quentncree/lehrer/pigeons.htm ...
I'd like to take you now on wings of song as it were, and try and help you forget, perhaps, for a while, your drab wretched lives. Here is a song all about springtime in general, and in particular about one of the many delightful pastimes that the coming of spring affords us all.
Spring is here, a-suh-puh-ring is here.
Life is skittles and life is beer.
I think the loveliest time of the year is the spring.
I do, don't you? 'Course you do.
But there's one thing that makes spring complete for me,
And makes every Sunday a treat for me.
All the world seems in tune
On a spring afternoon,
When we're poisoning pigeons in the park.
Every Sunday you'll see
My sweetheart and me,
As we poison the pigeons in the park.
When they see us coming, the birdies all try an' hide,
But they still go for peanuts when coated with cyanide.
The sun's shining bright,
Everything seems all right,
When we're poisoning pigeons in the park.
We've gained notoriety,
And caused much anxiety
In the Audubon Society
With our games.
They call it impiety
And lack of propriety,
And quite a variety
Of unpleasant names.
But it's not against any religion
To want to dispose of a pigeon.
So if Sunday you're free,
Why don't you come with me,
And we'll poison the pigeons in the park.
And maybe we'll do
In a squirrel* or two,
While we're poisoning pigeons in the park.
We'll murder them all amid laughter and merriment,
Except for the few we take home to experiment.
My pulse will be quickenin'
With each drop of strych'nine
We feed to a pigeon.
(It just takes a smidgin!)
To poison a pigeon in the park.
I could make so many comments about the vanity, limited vision, general stupidity, and inhumanity of such attempts to control nature, but that would take away from the overall hilarity of the story. So, while I think we should all keep these things in mind, I also think that the most appropriate response is something along the lines of...
"You tried to do what?! Well, what did you think would happen?!! That's just completely stupid! Ha... Ha... Ha...!" All the while pointing fingers at them and telling everyone to come and see.
Think I'm overdoing it a bit?
Divebombing from dying while flying?!? That is pricelessly funny.
Off Topic:
Reveres,
I always loved reading the first line of your old profile:
"In epidemiology an effect is the endpoint of a causal mechanism. An effect measure is an estimate of the influence of a particular factor on a population's health."
Why do you no longer use it?
It's still there, under the "about" tab on the header.
floridagirl: Thanks for pointing this out. We didn't realize it got lost in the move. We will restore as soon as we can. We are on dial-up for the month and all transactions on the internet are slowwwww. That's why we don't comment as much. We'll take care of it.
In my typical cynical healthcare mindset, I just realized that the same healthcare administrator that decided to have pigeons murdered is probably gonna be the same one to decide how to handle the unwashed masses during a panflu(!)
EEK!
To be fair, perhaps They did not realize the method of extermination to be utilized on the poor feathered ones. Just like They did not know about the (alleged) euthanasias during Katrina.
Oh yeah...They weren't there! Think they'll be there (in house) during a panflu? (tweet, tweet, splattttt!)
There are other side effects of bird culls for the purposes of AI control, which are much more important than a little disturbance in the population.
In Turkey, following widespread culling of poultry to control AI, there has been a substantial increase in disease in humans due to ticks/tick-borne infections. The poultry used to control the ticks.
I heard about this first hand yesterday at the ISVEE conference in Cairns from a Turkish veterinary epidemiologist.
Another strange pigeon mortality story: some 10 or 15 years ago, while my father was the city manager of a small eastern Washington town, the downtown merchants approached him about the pigeon problem (you don't want your customers getting their cars be-fouled while they're spending money in your store). The town looked into several options and, during that process, they were approached by a "pigeon hit-man" who volunteered to solve the problem for $1 a bird. No word on how he would have accomplished this feat, but my father had visions of some crazy running around downtown with a gun or flinging poison everywhere.
In the end, they settled on plastic owls on the rooftops of the downtown buildings. You can still see them as you drive down the main street; they're easy to spot because they usually have pigeons sitting on them.