I’ve been thinking about the avian flu recently, and it’s not for the reason you might expect. I’m not in the least bit afraid of it, which is exactly my concern. I’ve read all the stories, and how there is the potential to infect vast swaths of society. Chicken sneezes can wipe us off the face of the planet, and it’s no joking matter. People around the world are dying. Sure, we can debate whether it is as serious a threat as it’s being made out to be, or that in comparison to other viruses and diseases, it is a flyspeck on the windshield of what we should be worrying about. But one point that can’t be argued, and this leads to my real concern, is that no one will ever take seriously something called the “bird flu.”

No bats in the belfry — I have squirrels in the attic. Thought it was trolls for a while there, but it’s the bushy-tailed, nut-eating rodents who have invaded my rafters. At least one that I know of, and boy can he make a racket. Apparently he has a crash derby set or a jackhammer. I know it’s a squirrel because I climbed up there the other day and spotted him. There he was, not at all frightened to see me. In fact, he looked more offended by my presence. “Who the heck are you?” he seemed to be saying. “What are you doing in my house with shoes on?”

… and then a giant crack tore through the land, ripping across the earth like a slithering snake, swallowing everything in sight. The sound was thunderous, and people ran while it swallowed houses and convenience stores. But one man did not have time to react. He stood there unaware, eating a smoked sausage, and lost his footing before toppling into the abyss, never to be heard from again. My brother had been swallowed by the wedding planning chasm of doom. Sadness swept the land. My, it’s mighty good to have been married so long ago, and so far removed from wedding planning. Not that I didn’t enjoy getting married. Who doesn’t enjoy an infinity of planning and spending more money than the GDP of Paraguay, all so you can say, “I do”? Then you stare mouth-watering while guests devour food you won’t have time to touch.

Taxasaur — A prehistoric beast who comes every spring to devour your money after chasing you through a twisting maze of complexity and impossible-to-understand bureaucratic legalese. The Taxasaur is tedious and tenacious, taking no prisoners and wearing a thick armor made up of forms called the “1040ES” and the super protective “Unrecaptured Section 1250 Gain Worksheet.” Wo! “Unrecaptured” doesn’t even make sense.

For three generations I’ve had a family member call the Sunshine State home. Some member of my clan has sat beneath a palm tree here, sweaty and happy, laughing at the rest of the world. The farthest north anyone has ever lived is Kentucky, where my dad is from. In fact, I like to say I’m more Southern than most southerners since my grandmother came to Florida from Cuba. Top that! Growing up as a boy in Tampa, Jacksonville was considered up north for me (I thought it was a suburb of Boston), and when I moved to St. Augustine in 1991 to go to school, it was as if I had moved to Alaska by the way the temperature would drop. You even have to wear coats up here and once in a while you might see frost, like this past week. In Tampa, you’re lucky if your ice pop doesn’t melt in February. But as I spent the week hunkered down in the worst cold we’ve seen all year, trying to convince my boss that I DID have a doctor’s note prescribing hibernation for the rest of the season, I watched bone-chilling clips of all those crazy lunatics living up in that frozen tundra called the Northeast.

Is nothing sacred anymore? Is nothing safe? Is this world so dangerous that everything we eat, wear, touch and spend any quality time with is carcinogenic? And most importantly, am I going to have to start ironing again? Say it ain’t so. I read an article the other day that has the potential to impact my life in the most dreadful way. It talked about a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientific review panel labeling a chemical used to manufacture Teflon as “likely” carcinogenic.

What is it about the human species that we feel the need to collect garbage? I was thinking about this while running the other night. I had passed a house with the garage door open and what looked like a vast mountain range of cardboard boxes that rivaled the Rockies. While it was pretty dark, I could clearly see that this concentration of “stuff” was causing a sink hole to develop beneath it.