Of Mice and Men

As to the URL: I was cleaning out this lady's garage for her Saturday (an act of Christian kindess) and got hit in the face with a pasty cloud of dust, which I'm pretty sure was mingled with rodent feces. Two days later, I started feeling "flu-like symptoms." Being the son of a notorious hypochondriac, I wondered if I might have contracted the deadly hantavirus, which leaves 4 in 10 dead.

Related to ebola, hanta (as its friends call it) does its dirty work when humans inhale the aerosolized fecal matter of infected rodents. Pleasant. Now, I didn't do much inhaling, but as sure as Mickey Mouse is enduring an endless puberty, I got me an eyeful of mouse poop. Of course, as any good scientist will tell you, correlation (my flu-like symptoms) is not causation (rat turd in the eye), but, yes, I was spooked.

I went to the doctor for a blood test this morning, and I will find out within the next two days if, in fact, this a hantavirus-free site. Furthermore, I have never wanted a cold so badly. I figure I was just helping somebody out, so God's got to count that for something ...