The real reason I had to start blogging is because no one believes the crazy stuff that happens to me while I'm running. It was a fantastic morning, easy beautiful countryside running. At mile 11 in the middle of cow and horse country, sitting in the middle of the trail was a small, blue parakeet. The kind people keep as pets in cages. I yelled at the dogs to keep away, and bent down to look at it. It looked lethargic. I picked it up every so gently, and then it bit me, twice on the thumb with its razor sharp little beak. In surprise, I sort of dropped/threw the bird, which flew right into the mouth of my golden retriever, who ran off down the trail with white wing tips hanging out of either side of her mouth. I ran after her, yelling for to let go of the bird, when I noticed my thumb was bleeding in rivulets down my arm. Panic stricken (and daughter of a health inspector) I remembered how birds, next to insects, are the largest carriers of the kind of crazy microorganisms and bacterium that spread into deadly epidemics such as the Spanish Flu that killed 20 million people in 1918. So I start down the riverbank in an effort to plunge my hand into the water and wash away the epidemic I'm about to start because of my carelessness. As I'm inching my way down the bank, I step right onto a snake, which is making a noise like a rattlesnake. From that very spot in the middle of the riverbank, I DIVE into the river--clothes, shoes and all. It was a shockingly cold. Still panic stricken, I'm not sure if I should make my way back to the bank, I feel hypothermia becoming a very real possibility and make it back to the trail dripping and sloshing the all the way back home. D+@#! parakeet. If that was your parakeet, I'm very sorry.
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