The yellow duckling is fine and well. It is going into pin -- i.e. its feathers are starting to come in. It appears no worse for the ordeal.
The tiny reed pool has been filled as ducklings tend to be dumb about such things. I do think mother ducks can be very harassed with the silly things that ducklings get up to.
The bird flu is far to the south of us. Very worrying for those involved and I see once again, they are attempting to blame wild birds. The strain involved was last detected on the German/Czech border in the summer, very probably early August. The incubation period for the disease is 3-6 days. Birds who are infected tend not to migrate. The time scale is awfully long for the disease to be within the wild bird population and to be unnoticed. Also one would need to look at patterns of migration and investigate if birds from the area routinely turn up in Norfolk/Suffolk. The wildlife reserve next to the farm had not noticed any problem prior to this outbreak. Bird wardens do tend to be vigilant.
In short it is far too facile to blame wild birds and they need to investigate all the options. It sounds far more like infected meat/poultry feed. In other words, somewhere, corners were cut. The last outbreak in February was probably caused by imported turkey meat.
Anyway, hopefully the outbreak can be contained relatively quickly. And I would point out that the H5N1 despite the dire predictions of several years ago has yet to mutate and there is no evidence of human to human passing of the virus.
The revisions continue and I feel better about them. The book will be good.
3 comments:
My question has nothing to do with todays post :) In May you posted about McKee's story. I bought the book and love it. But I've come up against something in it that I can't quite grasp and I'd love to know what you think :
McKee talks about story values (universal qualities of human experience that may shift from positive to negative or negative to positive, from one moment to the next.)
At the end of the scene the value should have undergone a change.
He gives examples:
love to hate, truth to lie, strength to weakness, hope to despair, confidence to self doubt...
But I still can't grasp exactly what a story value is. Is it an emotion? An attitude? A state of mind. All of these?
What do you think, Michelle. Is there a simple way to define a story value?
The media pounces on what *they* think the cause is without ever considering the damage they may do. They just love to stir, stir, stir so they have to announce on the 6pm news.
Good news about the duckling. Does your dh know he's a hero?
Alice I will give it a shot.
Jen -- yes I think my dh knows that he is a hero. ;)
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