German cat dies
I hate it when animals or birds die. (And humans too, obviously, I wouldn't want you to think that I care more about animals than humans.) Last night we passed a dead fox on the southbound A217. I swerved to miss it as it was curled up on the road as if perhaps sleeping. It must have been hit moments before. I didn't want to be the first to desecrate its still-warm body, but I expect, with that much traffic, it will have been paste within the hour. I always keep an eye out for foxes on the roads in semi-rural Surrey. You mostly see them at night, sneaking across roads, and I would be inconsolable if I ever hit one. A cat has died on the Baltic island of Rugen (I don't know how to do umlauts on this keyboard - there's one over the "u") of the H5N1 strain of avian flu. They suspect it ate a heavily infected bird, as it was found near to where most of Germany's 121 cases of the virus have been found. Poor cat. Poor birds. It is clear that the non-human form of this virus will at some point hit Britain. Even the most hysterical newspapers have stopped making it front page news, presumably because they realise that a pandemic that will kill us all is a very remote possibility. The drugs companies have already had their way, selling tons of Tamiflu, which is not a vaccine, nor is it proven to prevent or cure bird flu. But governments have bought the lot, just in case.

Whenever there's a health scare, you can be sure that one of the all-powerful pharmaceutical companies will be behind it. They invented erectile disfunction and sold us Viagra, which was formulated for something else but didn't work, so they had to foist it on us pampered Westerners somehow. But the drugs companies are running out of illnesses to invent and pills to invent to combat those illnesses. They're doing well with statins. And they've done well with bird flu. (The same companies make veterinary medicines, so they're laughing if farmers have to vaccinate flocks and it never reaches humans in Europe anyway.) I feel sorry for the farmers, and that's something I don't usually say. Having said that, avian flu has only flourished because conventional, factory farming uses so many antibiotics and crams its livestock into appalling close quarters, making the spread of disease a piece of cake. Anyway, I feel sorry for the German owners of that cat. They must be sad today.


On a more upbeat avian note: yesterday, I was thrilled to see a family of seven siskins feeding at my feeder. First time we've had siskins in the garden, but what an entrance. At first glance I thought they were greenfinches but the black cap and the rich yellow gave them away. What a glorious, life-affirming sight.