Chickskillers
ON TUESDAY, ampalaya with egg was my breakfast and dinner. On Wednesday, ground meat in egg.
On Thursday, rice fried with egg became breakfast. Friday, smoked fish and salted egg. Except for changes in main noun and preposition, egg was the mainstay in this week’s meals. Perhaps the Pampangueño cooks just love eggs or cafeteria regulars do.
Many of my breakfast classmates and I take our eggs with a national daily, which are piled near the food trays. Despite our conspicuous consumption of news, which prominently featured this week the culling of birds to stop the spread of bird flu in Pampanga, when the cafeteria closes by 4 p.m., the hordes have wiped away every trace of egg, presumably to return the next day.
I know because one of the Pampangueña ladies kindly whipped up an egg sandwich I could eat before my evening class.
On the sound theory of not biting the hand that feeds one, I’ve never asked the cafeteria crew if our eggs are sourced from Pampanga, where they are going after every chicken, quail, and duck suspected of or testing positive for the H5 strain.
I’ve tried to eavesdrop on conversations among cafeteria diners, who are mostly from the natural sciences. But stepping up human resistance to viruses or implementing strict biosecurity measures does not seem to be on the minds of this learned crowd when they are tackling eggs and w hat not s.
Being of the humanities discipline, I rationalize my eggs-cesses by creating backstories: for instance, the salted egg lying on its bed of sun-ripened tomatoes must surely be “old stock,” salted away long before some alien winged in from elsewhere in Asia to infect our sitting ducks.
Besides, even if a foreign extremist invasion of H5 carriers did corrupt the Pampanga stocks, I put full confidence on the martial solution to rebellion and chaos in the poultries. After poultry workers in Pampanga refused to cull the infected birds even if promised the previously unheard-of daily allowance of P700, Malacañang called on the military to step in and terminate the threat.
Now you see why I’m not so gung-ho about this directive. I believe matters like these should be within the purview of the family, not the state.
Parents can’t well expect the government to do their jobs. The latter already has its hands full dealing with things like the economy, insurgency and criminology and whatnot.
Not to mention the millions of pesos entailed in the endeavor that are better off somewhere else. Anyway, I have a feeling parents of students who are “randomly picked” won’t take it so lightly.