Laura Erickson's For the Birds

This radio birdwatcher’s endless effort to stay on the cutting edge of developments in the world of intestinal parasites, along with my ceaseless quest to prove to listeners everywhere that bird tapeworms are far more useful than most people realize, has led me down many strange paths, but none so weird as the one that intersected with Pulitzer Prize-winning humor-writer Dave Barry.

It started two years ago, when I noticed a glistening opalescence as I cleaned the newspapers under Snarfy the Nighthawk. I brought a sample to the Northshore Veterinary Clinic for analysis, and my suspicions were verified: Snarfy had tapeworms.

There are few nighthawk tapeworms described in the literature, presumably because normal ornithologists seldom sit around waiting for nighthawks to go to the bathroom, so I had a significant discovery on my hands and may actually be the world authority on nighthawk tapeworms. I got two more samples from Snarfy before her supply ran out, but the next year I received a new nighthawk, Bullwinkle, who was teeming with the little critters.

Naturally, I devoted a page in my book to bird tapeworms, and that was the page that Dave Barry latched onto when he wrote an endorsement of the book. In gratitude, I sent him one of Bullwinkle’s tapeworms in a vial, wrapped in a box with a bow, and he sent me a postcard saying, “Thanks. It was delicious.”

Next thing I knew, Dave Barry included a half-page entry for bird tapeworms in his annual Christmas gift-buying guide, published in the Miami Herald’s Tropic Magazine. There was a big photo of the tapeworm I sent him, and this is what he wrote:

A [bird tapeworm] is the perfect gift for the person—such as your immediate supervisor—to whom you would really like to give an internal parasite.

This is an actual tapeworm. It came from a bird, and it was sent in for reasons that we still do not totally comprehend by Laura Erickson, who wrote a book entitled, For the Birds: An Uncommon Guide. This book contains a lot of amazing information about birds, including the fact that they get tapeworms. In fact, according to Erickson’s book, a single duck can contain as many as 1,600 tapeworms, which explains why ducks always seem so cranky.

Erickson told us that the tapeworm she sent us came from a nighthawk named Bullwinkle. She didn’t tell us the tapeworm’s name, so we’ve been calling it Roger. Roger is only about the size of a grain of rice, but he has a lot of personality considering that he’s dead and floating around in some kind of chemical solution. We talk to him a lot about things that are on our mind.

“Roger,” we say, “can you believe some guy wants $100 million a year just to play basketball?

Roger doesn’t say much—he’s not a big sports fan—but he’s a good listener, which is more than you can say for a lot of people. Plus you can put Roger in your pocket and carry him anywhere, which means that not only do you always have company, but you also have protection against assault by violent criminals. (“Get back! I have a tapeworm!”).

Unfortunately, nighthawk tapeworms are not available in stores. If you want one for yourself or that special someone on your holiday gift list, you’ll have to use the technique that Erickson used to obtain Roger. “You sit around and wait for the nighthawk to go to the bathroom.”

You will do this if you really care.