1797 Home Again, and Leery of Raccoon Poop

Monday, May 5, 2008

I mapped out my own route home yesterday. Rather than take the GPS-recommended route through Pennsylvania, I dropped down to the DC beltway, swung up past Baltimore and across the Delaware Memorial Bridge (dedicated to war dead. Isn't it odd that the name doesn't say what it's a memorial to? I wondered if it was anticipating the demise of Delaware), and then up the NJ turnpike. It wasn't as direct, but it took an hour less than Friday's route.

Saturday in the hospitality room I was sitting next to a guy who was talking about how GPS devices work, and I mentioned that in lower Manhattan, downtown, the signals are purposely blocked. He snorted at me and said it was not on purpose, that the buildings simply cause the signals to bounce.

Now, I'll grant that there's a possibility he's correct. But there's also a possibility he's not. I tried to tell him that it worked just fine in the canyons of midtown, and in the area where it didn't work downtown we were not in canyons - the nearest buildings on the right were at least three hundred feet away, and on the left was the Hudson river, completely open - so bouncing didn't seem likely, especially a bounce that would put the car three blocks inland from where it actually was.

I was not arguing. I was simply presenting my personal experience, and what I'd been told by someone whom I believe. Input to consider. But he turned his back and refused to listen.

He really really pissed me off the way he simply dismissed me. He was so damn cocksure. Some Mensans do that. They are so sure they're right that they won't listen to or think about any other possibilities. He made no attempt to consider or integrate what I said.

I don't mind being corrected. I do mind being ignored.

Sometimes these folks have no sense.

Friday night at the Jacuzzi, there were about 8 people sitting on the edge with their legs in the water, and 5 fully in the water when I arrived. They didn't have the bubbles on, and I asked why, and they said that it wasn't working right, and it was too loud for conversation. Someone else said let's try it again anyway, for a few minutes. So one of the women went over and turned the dial, then hit the big red button on the wall next to the dial, "to turn it on". It didn't go on. She tried three or four times before someone pointed out that the red button was the emergency cutoff.

So she finally got the thing going, and there're no bubbles. The water level was too high, over the air intake holes, so air was not getting mixed in. Folks complained. The lifeguard came over and said that the max was six people in the water for it to work right. The Mensans counted - we've got six in the water, so duh?

I felt so sorry for the lifeguard when he realized what he'd said. The look on his face was priceless. I knew what he wanted to say, but couldn't. I wanted to say it, too, and couldn't. At least four of the six in the water were close to or well over 400 pounds each. They really didn't seem to notice what the problem was. They decided there was too much water in the pool, and turned it off.

Sigh.

Sometimes I wonder why I go to these things.

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Actually, there was a presentation on Sunday morning that almost made it all worthwhile. It was a guy who works for the Smithsonian, and frequently works with the national zoo (which is run by the Smithsonian) on occupational safety. He talked about the dangers faced by the animal handlers.

He didn't have handouts because it was supposed to be a powerpoint presentation, and we could take notes. The organizers provided a laptop with a projector hookup. In typical Mensa fashion, no one thought to ask what software was needed on the laptop. It didn't have powerpoint. (This is usual, that Mensans seem to assume that "everyone has what I have" and "nobody needs what I don't have". Like when our local guy edited the ByLaws with a proprietary application, and didn't seem to understand what was wrong with that. He liked it, therefore everyone should have it.)

So anyhow, the Smithsonian guy did the presentation with no photos, foils, flipcharts, or handouts, and still managed to make it interesting.

Zoos are crawling with weird diseases. There's some breed of monkey (I forget) that carries a herpes virus that doesn't bother them much at all, but is 100% fatal to humans. They need to be penned in such a way that they can't escape, and can't spit, poop, or piddle on the public, because the virus can enter through the skin. When the handlers enter the compound, they have to wear hazardous materials suits. Having these monkeys costs a fortune in liability insurance. (No one asked why a zoo would want to have them, but the National Zoo is heavily involved in conservation and breeding programs, so I guess that's why.)

Elephants carry TB. Their skin is too thick for the tine test, so they teach the elephants to suck up water and slosh it up and down in their trunks and then squirt it into a beaker for testing. The elephants like to do it.

The zoo doesn't have raccoons (I don't think) but wild raccoons are always entering the compounds from Rock Creek Park. They know where the good food is. Now, this part scared me. It's shocking, and I don't know why we've never heard about it before.

80% of racoons carry a particular type of roundworm in their intestines. Their feces contain roundworm eggs, which become infectious after drying for 30 days. If a human ingests the eggs, the roundworms grow in the intestines, but unlike in the raccoon, they penetrate the intestines and migrate throughout the body, including the eyes and brain, causing irreparable damage.

Ok, I'm not likely to eat raccoon feces. But it gets scarier.

If you breathe in the eggs, he said, the eggs can lodge and hatch in the upper nasal passages, and the larvae migrate directly to the brain, where they form a mass that crowds and kills the brain. Nobody knew that could happen until a recent case of a man who ran over raccoon feces while mowing his lawn.

At this point the audience erupted. 80%? The raccoons in my back yard? Why have we never heard of this before?

Apparently infection is more rare than one would think. Raccoons don't normally poop out in the open. They tend to go next to or under downed and rotting logs in the woods, and in brush piles. So as long as you don't handle raccoons or kick or lick rotting logs, you're unlikely to contact the eggs.

Uh, the places where raccoons poop sound a lot like the places geocachers plant their caches. Could this be a problem for geocachers Daughter and Hercules?

And when a raccoon is run over on the road, um, thirty days later is the roadside full of ripe eggs ready to be breathed?

And if this is all true, why is infection so rare? Is it possible that it's just not diagnosed?

Ick.

The Smithsonian guy also talked about various diseases and dangers with other animals, from cats to reptiles. If you think toxoplasmosis in a housecat is a problem, consider the tiger. And the one company that made coral snake antivenom stopped making it, so you'd better not get bitten. And black-footed ferrets cannot be tamed. And you never look a male gorilla in the eye. And no matter how "tame" a wild animal can be, they have very strong instincts that can be triggered by the most innocent actions. And there's a breed of American squirrel that hates vipers, and has learned to increase the temperature in its tail, so that flicking the tail around allows it to confuse the snake long enough that the squirrel can bite the snake in the back of the neck and kill it, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi style.

So some of the weekend was interesting....
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