Wednesday, February 15, 2006

News

I suppose it's pretty ironic that I was in the middle of extracting cerebrospinal fluid from a 10-day-old chicken embryo when I heard the radio news this morning: Vogelgrippe in Deutschland... Bird flu in Germany. The linked article is the first English translation of the news I've seen, and it's already out of date... German media outlets now indicate that three of the four swans found dead Friday on the Baltic island of Rügen have tested positive for H5N1.

Rügen, as it turns out, is probably about 200km from Kiel, where I spent 6 weeks of my summer. I have pictures of a family of swans bobbing around on the Kieler Fjord, and I remember watching them drift like ghostly shadows in the moonlight after any number of lovely water's-edge dinners with my friends.


Gladly, the current batch of eggs in our incubator comprises the last go, and will be finished by the end of the week. It's also fairly lucky, as I'm anticipating new EU regulations that would likely make obtaining fertile eggs much more difficult. Despite science's penchant for sending one back to the drawing board whenever surprising results come in, I supect we'll completely finish the current analyses before pursuing interesting tangents that might require additional samples. Well, there's plenty left to be done as far as the current analyses are concerned. Hmm... I wonder if there's any info out there about virus presence in ovo...

I have one more chicken breast filet in my fridge, and sufficient eggs for two more batches of brownies. After that, I suspect that I'll be taking one more step towards full-on vegetarianism. Well, at least I can still have fish.

I guess I'll also be keeping a warier eye on aggressive city pigeons...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Alaina! I actually decided to go vegetarian in my home cooking - partly because I prefer to buy free-range meat, which is expensive, and partly because non-meat foods are just way cheaper anyway. And suddenly I can afford all sorts of other good food... anyway, it comes recommended!
(When I eat out, however, I don't hold back.)

Anonymous said...

(that was me)
-tim

Bryan Stokes II said...

Noooooo!

Going vegetarian means that the bird influenza has won!

I think this is an excellent opportunity to explore the culinary delights that lie within the red meats.

Steak: It's what's for dinner.