It’s not even May, and I already got the cover photo for this season’s Readings.
Is it dystopian? Surely. Alarmist? That depends. Wise, cautious, respectful, and caring? Absolutely.
I call the south shore of Lake Octavius in Plover Park “The Hospice.” It’s where hopeless gulls go to die in peace. You never know what you’ll find at The Hospice in the summer. Perhaps an old gull hiding in the light vegetation at the top of the hill is taking its last breaths. Maybe a gull with two broken wings is slowly strolling the shore, hoping for just one more “last meal.” Or perhaps a gull so hopelessly entangled in a fishing line that it can’t move its leg without pulling the fishing hook stuck to its face even deeper into its eyeball. I try to help when I can, but you only make things worse 99% of the time. You can understand why I avoid the shortcut through the area altogether if I’m having a bad day.
However, this winter, a drastic change has occurred at The Hospice. The number of deceased gulls has skyrocketed, creating a disturbing and unhygienic scene at the top of The Finger. The gulls and the local crows scavenging them have been reduced to mere carcasses, victims of an unknown threat.
Kashi Davis, upon learning of this, didn’t hesitate. She declared, ‘Not on my habitats!’ and immediately devised a plan to clean up the area.
Mind you, while Kashi is handling the birds, Hazmat style, in goggles, gloves, a facemask, and a full Tyvek suit, I am running around mere feet away, taking pictures. (Admittedly, I, too, was entirely covered up, including a face buff, just not for avian flu. I was covered up for something with a 100% probability of ruining my life rather than an unknown: tree pollen. I am following my complete Pollen Prevention Protocol TM right now.)
But I asked her directly: “Given the age of these remains, Don’t you think there is no risk of avian flu left in them? Wouldn’t the virus have died already, too?”
Her response?
What’s the probability I’ll get infected? Low, but it’s not zero. There are just too many unknowns. I’m just not going to mess around with this one. Besides, what’s the cost of being a little careful?
~ Kashi Davis
(It turns out the cost is somewhere between $8.99 and $29.99 on Amazon Prime, not including taxes, for the full-body Tyvek suit and accessories.)
She’s right. She has considerable responsibility for co-leading the state’s beach-nesting bird team. Even when Kashi is tired or in a bad mood, our whole coast is a little worse off.
And, unlike the rest of us, Kashi has a second reason to be ultra-cautious: she interacts with dozens of birds and people who interact with birds every day. She can’t risk spreading avian flu all over New Jersey, even when that risk is negligible. She’s just plain smart about it, rooted in her caring.
So what about the rest of us? How concerned should we be seeing this?
No one can say. All we know is that Avian Influenza has been slowly growing around the globe, that it spreads quickly, and that it’s deadly. It has always been a vague, distant issue—first, far away in Asia, and more recently, in chicken farms and isolated pockets of wild birds in faraway places. But now it appears to be here, so it is worth being more aware of. Health professionals are raising the alarm regarding the virus being found in mammals and humans. While rare, viruses evolve. These are the few things we know.
Birds are a huge part of our world at the shore. I’m not even that interested in birds, but just listen to me… “Bird, bird, bird, bird!” They are just that important to life at the beach.
The advice is the same as always, with a little more urgency. Don’t handle wild birds, dead or alive. Don’t feed them or intentionally draw them close to you. Be aware of children and pets, yours and others, who might not know the rules. Keep them away. This would be especially true on the beaches this summer.
If you find a bird who appears ill, let it be and keep away from it. If you have features like feeders, fountains, and other things that attract groups of wild birds, stay up-to-date with guidance regarding them. They are obviously a source of transmission.
Watching Kashi lumber around the beach in the midday sun in a full Tyvek suit made me reflect that wearing a face mask in the grocery store wasn’t such a big deal after all.
Continue not having contact with wild birds like always; you, your family, and your pets should be OK, and you won’t be contributing to the spread of this nasty disease through our environment.
And remember Kashi’s hot-take: The risk isn’t zero, so let’s not mess around with this one.
Say something kind