When the levee broke, the water came and flooded the entire town. To save the folks, men came in boats, so not a soul would drown. "Not any room," the rescuer said, "For dogs, or cats, or pets."

"Men, women and children only, Sorry" he expressed regrets.

"You can't go girl," her master said. As with tears, he turned away. "I promise I'll come back for you, But for now girl ... SIT and STAY!"

Reminds me of a few dogs I have known, more of > ~*Sit and Stay*~ A Great Story!

~~~
Almost Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Avian Flu

Q: I'm pretty worried about the avian flu. Here in Canada, the authorities are nervously waiting the arrival of the birds coming from the south. Is there any risk that the Robins or any other of our fine feathered friends are in danger of carrying the dreaded virus and are they in danger of being massively killed by panic-stricken people?

A: It will be extremely unlikely that avian flu will hit songbirds in the US or Canada this year. If you look carefully at where people and wild birds have tested positive, its always started where poultry is overcrowded and kept in unsanitary conditions. How do wild birds get it? When infected chickens poop or are butchered, contaminated feces or washed away blood and body parts can wash into rivers and streams, bringing the virus into the wild. That is why the only wild birds that have tested positive so far have been water birds and a hawk, which probably fed on a sick chicken.

The spread of the disease didn't spread along normal bird migration routes, but along human trade routes. Apparently people are still shipping infected chickens and their feathers and eggs from place to place, and that's introducing the disease into new places. Now the disease does seem to be following wild bird migration routes, too, and that means that birds like cranes and ducks that winter in Asia and cross over the Bering Strait to Alaska may carry the disease here. There are plans to kill and test a great many of them this year.

It wouldn't be for at least a year or two that the disease reaches backyard songbirds. Even if a backyard bird got sick, it would be very easy to protect yourself from the disease whenever you find a dead bird in your yard, pick it up with your hand in a plastic bag, turning it inside out without touching the bird (the way people pick up dog poop), and dispose of it in the garbage don't throw it in the woods where pets or other animals could eat it. The people who have become sick so far have not just picked up sick or dead chickens they've plucked or butchered the bodies of the infected birds, coming into a lot of contact with their blood and infected organs.

The good news about avian flu is that it probably won't develop into a pandemic where a lot of people get sick, at least not while the disease is so dangerous. The reason people get so very sick from it is because the place it attaches to us is very deep in the lungs. Even if the virus was capable of going from person to person, people can't cough out viruses from so deep. The virus would have to mutate two different ways: to attach higher up in the respiratory system AND to change so it could be transmissible from one person to another, before it could cause a genuine pandemic. But if the disease does mutate to attack higher up in the respiratory system, it probably won't be nearly as dangerous as it is in its present form.

I am very worried that people will overreact and kill birds in a panic. A great President of the United States once said that the only thing we had to fear is fear itself. If we can focus on careful science: to figure out how to help sick people survive this kind of flu; to create a vaccination to protect ourselves and farm animals from getting the disease in the first place; and to figure out how to prevent people from letting infected animals and their parts get from place to place, we'll have a better chance of conquering the disease than if we just panic.

Taken in it's entirety from jnorth.org
Laura Erickson's 101 Ways to Help Birds http://www.lauraerickson.com/

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