Wash knives and feeding sticks separately
Knives are sharp
That’s the sign I was staring at moments before slicing my knuckle open with a fillet knife.
I was quickly scrubbing gross, hardened flakes of fish off the blade of the knife when I miscalculated the distance from my hand.
My first instinct was to ignore it. But after a few seconds of turning my finger red, I decided I shouldn’t ignore it anymore. Mainly because my wash cloth was white and hiding the evidence of such a simple misjudgement seemed like far too high stakes.
I went to the exam room instead and spoke to one of the vet techs:
M: Do you have a bandaid I can have?
X: Of course! What happened?
I felt the shame creep in.
M: I cut myself doing dishes on a knife.
She handed me the box.
X: You can have any of these you want!
She handed me a form.
X: But I’m gonna need you to fill this out too.
So I filled out the form so that the wildlife rescue now has a permanent record of my stupid mistake. It was all quite dramatic for such a minor thing.
On my way home, I started thinking all about fish infections spreading through my body and how I’m going to become a mutant!
Speaking of disease being injected into my body, I got a flu shot today. I completely forgot to sign up but my colleagues tipped me off that they had some cancellations.
HR loves when they email you about something for weeks on end and you ignore them, then drop in half-way through the strictly scheduled day and ask to sign up. Haha, but like I said, they had extra jabs so they fit me in.
I’m pleased to know I won’t be catching H3N2 anytime soon, even as a fish. I’m not really sure what I’m going to do with my last few days as a human.
I am looking forward to having gills, but I hope I can still breathe out of water. Being a mermaid would be highly overrated. I don’t want to spend my days being touched by creepy seaweed and fighting with barracudas.
