One day, while processing a catch at our ringing station, I took a Chaffinch out of a birdbag and noticed that it had a tick on the top of its head, a place where it had no chance of removing it.
So, after ringing and taking the usual measurements, I got out the alcohol and the tweezers in order to remove the parasite (If you don't bomb it with alky first, you will leave the naughty bits in the bird and create a fester). Just as I was about to administer the fatal dose, a colleague came in and asked what I was doing, in the sort of tone that meant, I know what you are doing and you shouldn't be doing it.
"I am removing this tick from this Chaffinch", I replied (I was never good at repartee. I have l'esprit de l'escalier, where I come up with devastating ripostes when it's much too late).
Mike - for that was his name, poor bugger, he later fell off a cliff in Wales and drowned - replied: "But you are disturbing that bird's ecosystem" (or worms to that effect). "Why are you doing that?"
"Because I prefer Chaffinches to ticks," I replied, making a mental note to subscribe to a course on Saying Clever Things.
"Huff puff," he said, and went to Wales to fall off a cliff.
I have worried ever since if I was right to remove that tick, and also if I contributed to his early demise. You never know, do you, what effect your witty ripostes might have on a body?
5 comments:
There, there.
You know, I wouldn't blame myself about Mike's death too much if I were you. We can't cheat death when it's our time. If it hadn't been accidental cliff diving, it could have been something worse, like staple leys.
How true, d. Or, heaven forbid, an overindulgence in wiggens green (qv).
Perhaps there is a moral here which is not being properly addressed: He who refused to de-tick Chaffinches is likely to fall off a cliff, probably in Wales.
No, I wouldn't go along with that. Mike W was a good guy, didn't deserve to fall off a cliff at such a young age. He was right about the tick, according to his lights. I am an amateur, he was a scientist. Make of that what you will.
No, I wouldn't go along with that. Mike W was a good guy, didn't deserve to fall off a cliff at such a young age. He was right about the tick, according to his lights. I am an amateur, he was a scientist. Make of that what you will.
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