Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Border collies and golf courses

The upcoming avian flu crisis will affect every one of our lives. Most of the media however is (of course) providing us with gruesome scenarios on a daily basis. The usual shotgun reporting approach is not based on prevention, but rather one of creating a herd mentality (eg: why the hell can't congress make more Tamiflu? And: is Jim Cramer really picking pork-stocks?!)).

First off, the virus by nature is extremely hard to transmit from bird-to-human. You basically have to be in the close proximity to affected birds where there is excrement transaction (ie:swallowing bird-poop).

This however takes us to golf.

Basically, every course has a bird problem. It's become such a nuisance, that Border Collie trainers have been hired by golf courses to help root out Canadian Geese that infest courses. The collies run around chasing the birds off the course. I predict you'll see more courses that employ this tactic....it'll be a good year for dog trainers.

With the golf season upon us, it would be wise to use a few precautions:

You would be smart to not wash the golf ball with your mouth (I know that's gross, but I've seen it done hundreds of times).
You should wash your hands after your round, before you go eat a sandwich.
You would be smart to wash your golf towels and golf shoes in hot water after every round.
I'd even go so far as to not drink the course water. Bring your own bottle of water.

I'm sure you can think of more precautions....but these will get you started at least thinking about good hygiene that will be required in these coming months.

Please tell your golfing-friends and siblings to use good hygiene on the golf course, as it will become an issue.

Thanks for reading. Keep it in the short-grass.

JFB

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

On a similar, yet slightly more paranoid note about hygiene...

Yesterday I was looking for my ball near the woods (go figure) and I saw 4 balls very nicely arranged sitting no more than 2 inches away from each other. I reached down to pick them up thinking JACKPOT, but then my paranoia kicked in. I thought it was way to coincidental that they were right out in the open, they weren't really great balls, and they were neatly placed together, so I figured someone might have placed them there and used it as a toilet or something like that, just to get someone to pick up 4 nasty balls.

Chances are, someone didn't want them because they were crappy balls, and just tossed them down there, but I know I've heard some pretty sick stories, so I just left them there.