Sunday, September 25, 2005

Dead birds in Oulu

A few weeks ago when I was driving my grandson, Samuel, somewhere, I noticed a dead seagull at the side of the road. I wondered how it happened to be there.

The next day I was driving to town with Annikki when I saw the bird and pointed it to her.

She told me that there had been several cases of dead birds being found in Oulu and it was being investigated as to whether these birds had died of the Bird Flu.

A couple of days later, there was a report confirming that they had died of Bird Flu, but not the very dangerous type, and that sufficient vaccine had been acquired by Finland, in case there was an epidemic outbreak.

Another couple of days later, some authorities made a statement that the dead birds found around Oulu had died due to starvation!!

Last week was quite a glorious one. Annikki and I were off to the beach almost every evening for Annikki to gather stones.

As we were walking on the beach last Wednesday, we came across this corpse:

Dead Sea Gull on Nallikari Beach

Dead Sea Gull on Nallikari Beach


It certainly did not look malnourished.

On Saturday I took my new friend Theera, also known as Soda, the 14 year old son of my Thai friends who own a very nice restaurant in Oulu, to visit his new school. My intention was to teach him the bus routes to the school. The visit was a success as can be seen from this nice picture of Soda in front of the International School.

Soda in front of the International School

Soda in front of the International School


We took the bus back to his parents restaurant and as we were walking through the very nice park in Peltola, we came across this dead bird lying on the grass.

Dead Sea Gull in the Peltola park

Dead Sea Gull in the Peltola park


This bird was also not looking starved.

It is obvious that the cases of dead birds in Oulu have nothing to do with lack of food but are cases of bird flu. The Finnish authorities are covering up the situation so as not to cause alarm amongst the population, but the whole philosophy is wrong.

What if some youngsters see a dead bird, pick it up and take it home to show their parents. THAT COULD LEAD TO A CATASTROPHIC SITUATION.

It is better to make an honest statement. But Finnish Authorities are famous for trying to hide bad news from its people!

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