“Why do you always have to talk about tapeworms when I’m
eating?” he asks.
“I don’t,” I say. And I don’t, I’m sure I don’t. Except
maybe this time, but technically we aren’t eating yet, we are just getting
ready to cook dinner and even taking into consideration how easily Morgan is
moved to squeamishness, I figure I am still within a safe zone to bring up the
subject so we don’t have to talk about it while we are eating.
I have to admit, part of me finds tapeworms somewhat
fascinating, which is a weird thing to say and maybe fascinating is too strong
a word, but they really are so alien and so different from the everyday I
couldn’t help bringing them up since at that moment Murdoch had one of his very
own, his third in the last year and a half.
The first time he had one I was suitably disgusted and
completely grossed out. “Ewww,” I said when they were pointed out to me in his
feces by a friend, “And are those more on his butt?!” But like anything that
becomes more - for lack of a better word - ‘normal’, the disgust becomes
downgraded over time and for me this latest parasitic invasion elicited
disappointment more than anything else.
When Murdoch flashed past me on the stairs that morning a
couple of weeks ago and I caught a quick glimpse of some small stark white
thing against the black fur of his backside in the shadow of his tail, I knew
instantly what it was. I tried to convince myself that it was a splinter of
firewood from the pile stacked in the entryway, the pieces of which are
sometimes specially selected by one dog or the other and carefully shredded to
bits on Molly’s bed. He sat on those splinters, I told myself, and a couple
stuck to his fur. But I knew.
And when I followed him outside that morning with the
flashlight, climbing into my winter coat and boots, and trailed him to the spot
where he always does his business, I saw a couple of the white segments moving
about on top of his deposit.
“Oh Murds,” I said as he looked at me with indignation in
his eyes for so blatantly invading his privacy. “Why?” And I flashed back in my
mind to remember the various things he had eaten over the previous weeks,
digging up old bones as well as fresher carcasses from the snow. Where did it
come from?
And that’s the fascinating part. Most commonly dogs pick up
tapeworms from eating an infected flea. What that means is a flea larva has to
ingest the microscopic eggs of a tapeworm that are found inside those broken
off segments which emerge from the intestines of some infected animal or other.
That flea, as an adult, then has to be swallowed by another animal for the
resulting tapeworm to arrive inside another gut and settle in for the cycle to
begin again. The whole thing seems very unlikely. What are the odds?
Obviously quite good given Murdoch’s track record.
The plus side of all this though is that no one else in the
house can pick up a tapeworm from Murdoch. It has to go through a flea first,
which is why during all three of Murdoch’s infections, Molly never showed any
signs of her own. And I’ve been keeping a close eye on that.
Which is also why after a few days of tracking dogs through the
woods and watching what comes out of them I am more desensitized to the whole
thing than Morgan and can have these conversations in the kitchen and, yes,
probably even during a meal.
But I acquiesce, “Okay,” I say, hands in the air,
“I’m done.” although I'm not and his admonition that I always talk about tapeworms when he's eating makes it sound like that's all I ever talk about, which it isn't. Although, as we turn our attentions back to dinner prep and more appropriate
topics of discussion, I file away the tapeworm info for later.
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