Saw an eagle

On our walk in Ortega this evening Ginny & I saw a variety of sparrows taking a dust bath. We think there were several species; an ornithologist would know. Expert bird watchers like us identify them as LGBs.

Doesn't that sound prorfessional? It means little general birds.

At the Ortega River Bridge park we saw an American Bald Eagle. We have seen them before, but never in such a populated area.

The other day my friend Wes, who is a nurse, told me about one of his patients, a stroke victim who spoke only Spanish. The stroke created some mental disorientation and robbed the man of speech and much of his ability to eat.In order to give him his pills, Wes crushes them up in appleasauce and spoon feeds him, urging him to swallow his medicine.

Wes speaks a little Spanish but did not know the word for "swallow" so he looked it up in an on-line Spanish/English dictionary.

The patient exibited even more signs of mental confusion.

At the end of the shift a co-worker who speaks Spanish came on duty and laughed when she realized that Wes had been using the Spanish word "swallow" the well-known bird, instead of "swallow", the eating action verb.

He'd been telling the patient something like, "There's a bird in your medicine".

No wonder there was mental disorientation.

Posted on Saturday 21 of May, 2005 [03:41:52]