I Might Have the Plague? Or Maybe I Just Saved the Bay Area from The Black Death...

As I walk into the legal clinic I "work" at, I was not terribly excited. Thursday nights are a "classroom" type of session. No clients, just boring lectures and questions.

I proceed to the end of the long table, where I always sit, and place my bag down behind my chair. I turn around and stop dead in my tracks.

This guy, I shall call him Utah, has a...rodent. In his hands. And he is feeding it a coffee creamer.



I stand there, not wanting to sit down and put myself closer to the rodent until I have more information. I survey the scene. There are about a dozen people in the class, and I am the second to last person to arrive. Everyone else seems perfectly comfortable with Utah holding a rodent. I think to myself, "Well...maybe it's his pet?" I look around and see no cage. "And why would he bring his pet to the class?" I ponder.

I am still standing and I try and determine what kind of rodent it is for sure. My initial reaction was, "It's a freaking squirrel. A SQUIRREL." But I think to myself, "No, no one can possibly be that retarded. Maybe it's a rat? Definitely not a rat. A guinea pig? Nope. A...squirrel. It has to be a squirrel."

"Is that...a...squirrel?" I ask, incredulously.
"Yeah," Utah says, still feeding this squirrel the creamer.
"Is...it...your squirrel?"
"No."
"Where did you get it?"
"I found it in the parking lot. He looked super hungry."


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"So you picked it up and brought it in here?"
"Yeah," says Utah. He seems confused at my reaction.

After pondering my next move for a few minutes, I have to admit to myself that the squirrel is pretty cute. No. No! It's a squirrel! A vehicle for the black death!

Utah puts the squirrel into a small cardboard box once the lecture starts, and I can hear it scurrying around.

Finally I say, "You realize that you could get the plague from that thing if it bites you?"
"What plague?"
"The...bubonic plague."
"haha yeah right."
"I'm...serious."

I proceed to explain how I grew up in Tahoe and how campgrounds were routinely closed down due to outbreaks of the plague. He starts to get worried. We get quiet and continue on with the lecture.

During a short break, Utah asks me again about the plague. I tell him I have no idea, but maybe they transmit the plague by biting you? His face goes cold as the guy on the other side of me tells me, "Whoa, that thing was gnawing on his finger." A girl who came in after I did, and seems equally confused by the presence of the squirrel, chimes in that she believes they just carry fleas with the plague, and the fleas will jump off the squirrel and that is how humans can contract the plague. Now Utah is really freaked out. And actually, so am I.

"Dude, I had no idea. I was going to take it home to my kid."

That's right. He was going to take it home to his kid. A wild freaking squirrel. I have no idea how old he is...maybe 30? And he not only picks up a wild squirrel who is too weak to move, but he is going to take it home to his KID. Later, as I thought about the ridiculousness of the situation, it occurred to me that there is actually a pretty good chance the squirrel has rabies. I remember being taught that if a wild animal like a squirrel or a bat allows you to pick it up because it is so weak, it probably has rabies.

So maybe the Bay Area is safe from the Black Death. But Utah's kid is definitely foaming at the mouth as I write this.