Avian Flu as Halloween Costume

I spent Friday afternoon helping some TV reporters from San Francisco while they interviewed Wildlife Health Center Director Walter Boyce—again—on the threat of avian flu from wild birds.

A reporter called Walter Thursday afternoon from Vermont saying there was a black-tailed gull on Lake Champlain, a bird that by rights should really be in the Sea of Japan, and did it pose any kind of flu threat? Poor Walter. He hadn’t had breakfast or lunch but he tried to answer as best he could, calling from Southern California to see if I knew anything about this bird (I didn’t, though I’ve seen one in Rhode Island) and whether it might be a vector for AI H5N1 (avian flu, the scary kind) (yes, it might, according to a Japanese paper published in 1982).

The Friday San Francisco reporters were interesting and after the interview we were able to talk about the world and Harriet Miers and Colin Powell and what might happen. I invited a couple of guys from the New York Times over for dinner last week after they’d locked their keys in the trunk. There are way more boring folks to run into in the parking lot as you leave to go home, for sure. The problem is that now there are so many of them. For now. Once the pandemic hits nobody will be the slightest bit interested in wild birds as vectors…

Above, left, I’m dressed as avian flu, talking to a veterinarian and a vet tech on either clicker-training (the witch is an authority on the subject) or West Nile Virus (the crow is an authority on THAT).