Greetings, gentle reader, from the septic edge of the British Empire. I write to you with trembling fingers and a nose that has not been this wrung out since I discovered the abysmal quality of the gin at the Savoy. Today's bulletin from the frontline of the absurd: a bird flu so vicious it has turned a sleepy seal colony into a scene from a medieval plague pamphlet. The mortality rate is 75%. Three quarters of the blubbery, whiskered innocents have been spirited away by a virus that should, by all rights, be minding its own business in the respiratory tracts of waterfowl.
Let us pause to consider the sheer, madcap geometry of this tragedy. The colony, once a chorus of throaty barks and damp, mammalian contentment, is now a silent tableau of bloated, speckled corpses. The survivors loll about with a dazed, shell-shocked look, as if they have just witnessed the opening of a portal to some avian hell. One imagines them exchanging glances, their whiskers twitching in palpable confusion: 'What in Neptune's name just happened?'
And the guardians of our dear colony? The bureaucrats, the virologists, the ministers with their clipboards and their frantic press releases. They talk of 'containment zones' and 'biosecurity protocols'. They speak in the measured, panic-laden cadence of men who have just discovered that their carefully drawn flowcharts have been eaten by a bear. 'Initial assessments suggest,' they intone, 'a highly pathogenic strain with unprecedented mammalian spillover.' Translation: nature has laughed at our neatly scheduled world and has chosen to unveil a new, terrifying trick.
Consider the irony. We have spent months obsessing over the microbes of faraway lands, conjuring up exotic plagues from distant forests. Meanwhile, our own native fauna are being mown down by a disease we pompously call 'bird flu', as if it had any respect for avian exclusivity. This is the kind of biological slapstick that would make even the most stoic Darwinian weep into his afternoon gin.
I spoke to an elder of the colony, a leathery, crater-scarred brute who has survived the culling. 'It came from the sky,' he bellowed (I paraphrase his marine-mammal dialect). 'Flecks of feather and death drifting down on the breeze. We thought it was just a storm of snot, but it was a storm of doom.' His eyes, red-rimmed and glistening, held the knowledge of a thing that has seen too much. I offered him a swig from my hip flask, but he declined. He said the gin had become 'too bitter' for his taste.
But the moral of this tale is not just the disease. It is the response. The official statements, the televised hand-wringing, the inevitable 'lessons learned' review that will be commissioned after the last seal has been incinerated. The machinery of management grinds on, producing a comforting drone of process while the reality beneath it festers.
The seals, you see, are a mirror. They are us. Soft, warm, and utterly unprepared for the catastrophic whims of a universe that has no plan, no mercy, and a particularly robust strain of influenza. The only difference is that we have governments and press releases. They have only the cold sea and the sky. And the sky, it seems, is no longer a friend.
I shall now retire to the corner of this public house to contemplate the fragility of all things. The barman, a man of generous spirit, has agreed to serve me a 'Seal's Revenge': a cocktail of vodka, brine, and a silent, withering stare. It is, I find, the only appropriate response.
So raise a glass to the fallen, if you will. But be careful. The glass might be contaminated.
