You May Call Me Vibrio Vulnificus

You May Call Me Vibrio Vulnificus

Just spent the last two days getting an edumacation on safe food handling. Learning little common sense things about how to handle other people's food. Not that I handle other people's food--as a rule, I try to do that very little. But I supervise people who do, so I had to take a two day seminar learning that I should do my damnedest not to pick my nose and then handle your food.

Or, should the need arise, I should wash my hands between the digging for the gold and the serving of your plate of hominy and cornbread.

There was a lot interesting, including graphic descriptions of why you don't want e coli, salmonella, shigellosis or Hepatitis A. In fact, if you looked in my text book, you'll find helpful little notes along side each of these gastrointestinal creepers that run mostly along the lines of "Would Prefer Not to Get This One." It's a nice thought, and it is certainly true, but it does little to separate shigellosis from cryptosporidium in your mind, especially when the other defining factor for most of these things is diarrhea, ranging from watery to extremely bloody.

However, there was a nice fascination with the word Vibrio Vulnificus, a breed of bacterium found in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and along the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts...it's generally associated with oysters harvested from warm waters from April to October. It's a neat little beast that, if ingested by those with liver problems, kills with ruthless efficiency...it can make the rest of us fairly sick, too (including the aforementioned diarrhea).

Mostly, it was the words "Vibrio Vulnificus." Which I wrote roughly 35 times on the margins of one of the pages while I failed, once again, to listen during a class.

I also made a very nice doodle of a little man in a dark trench coat and sunglasses, carrying an uzi, stating that he was, in fact, "Vibrio Vulnificus," and he was here to speak with you about the dog that's been crapping in his yard.

I'd show it to you, but I don't have a scanner or any of that nice 1990's technology to speak of, and the picture from my picture phone just didn't do that masterpiece justice.

So. You'll have to take my word for it. Awesome.

Much more so than a case of shigellosis, at any rate.