An eight-year-old girl in Van, Turkey who raised chickens in her back yard apparently has become infected with bird flu after kissing and hugging her dying feathered friends. Fortunately, her health is improving and she's expected to be released from the hospital soon. From the Associated Press:
When her mother saw Sumeyya holding one of the dying chickens, she yelled at her and hit the girl to get her away.
Sumeyya began to cry. She wiped her tears with the hand she'd been using to comfort the dying chicken.
"She wiped her face," said her father, speaking in broken Turkish and wearing a leather jacket and a typical Kurdish headdress in their bright, clean home. "She started to swell. She had a really high fever…."
Even if not animal lovers like Sumeyya, children in poor agricultural towns tend to be extremely comfortable with the animals they share their lives with. It has been particularly difficult to convince them that this proximity can now be dangerous.
In Dogubayazit, the Turkish town near the Iranian border where most of the current cases originated, children usually outnumbered workers in trying to round up chickens for culling. Boys and girls led cows and sheep down the main streets. As adult out-of-towners fled from terrifying dogs that snarled from nearly every backyard, little local children giggled.
Link (Thanks, Jason Tester!)
