I've been out of touch for several days. My older son had a scary bout of salmonella - some designer chickens in Alice Waters' Edible Schoolyard are most probably the culprit. His mother is the responsible party (chickens can't help themselves, and neither can 5 year olds) -- I didn't remember to wash his hands after he'd been messing around the coop, and then he went off to gather raspberries to eat from the bush. La de dah, how very organic of us, eating raspberries from the Chez Panisse Foundation garden. The subsequent symptoms put him in the hospital on intravenous fluids and antibiotics for three days.
Children's Hospital Oakland expects the parent to be with the child around the clock; I compromised by driving home to sleep, but I spent 16 hours a day there from Saturday through today at dinner time. Thus no posting.
Moral of the story - if you must play with chickens, wash your hands. With soap.
Normal posts will resume shortly. The ever alert Alison Chaiken has sent me something via e-mail already.
Sorry you all had to go through that, Leila. Hope J. is feeling better.
To my knowledge nobody's gotten sick from handling our chickens, and the kids handle them pretty much every day, but they're quite a bit older than your kids.
Posted by: Peter | June 22, 2005 at 08:18 AM
Awww... poor baby. I hope he's doing better now.
Posted by: Donna | June 23, 2005 at 12:27 AM