Gross alert – made you look!

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, science, discomfort

When our son was eight, he and the grandchildren of a neighbor were playing together in the back yard. I went to the other end of the yard because I saw something red and gray. I found parts of a female cardinal that a hawk had eaten. One part was a severed lower leg, including the foot. A bone and tendons were sticking out. I called the kids over. I held up the foot by the leg bone and pulled on a tendon. The claws curled. A girl said, "Cool!" I said to our son, "That's the girl for you." Years later he married a young woman who is equally unflappable.

Early last year a hawk struck again, leaving these wings of a gull, still attached to the collar bones. We never found other parts of the gull. The rest was probably carried off after the heavy wings were detached.

No matter where we live, we are going to encounter death, usually many times. We also encounter other things that might gross us out: dog poop on the front sidewalk (in some cities, it could be people poop); half a worm in an apple; a public swimming pool with a distinctly greenish tint; even a case of worms from eating sushi or sashimi at the wrong establishment.

When a dead animal is found in our yard, or dog poop on the lawn (or sidewalk), my wife insists that I clean it up. She's more squeamish than the girl next door (or our daughter-in-law). The squeamish among us might benefit from reading Gory Details: Adventures From the Dark Side of Science by Erika Engelhaupt. Then again, maybe not. Don't let me push you into feeding your nightmares! But it may be of help.

We must recognize that life is messy and frequently gross. This point is made several times in the book, which is largely expanded essays from the author's blog for National Geographic, Gory Details. We may try to insulate ourselves from nature's messiness, but even our own bodies betray us. Most of us clean up our own "bathroom leavings", although the state of many public rest rooms indicates a good many folks are lax in that regard. We do so because we have to. If we want to eat, we are certain to eliminate. The alternative is to become an emaciated, stinking corpse. Well, we're going to become a corpse someday, anyway, but why hurry the process?

Disgust is universal. Things that cause disgust are partly built-in and partly cultural. A relative who was a missionary once said, "You need to be able to eat whatever your hosts put in front of you, without hesitation. Otherwise, don't go to the mission field." Her mission field was New Guinea when it was first opened to Westerners. She ate some stuff, like live grubs rolled in hot fat and taro meal, that most of us pampered folk can hardly bear to see anyone else eat, let alone be willing to take it in hand and gulp down. Disgust warns us that something is probably unhealthy to take in. But we add taboos and restrictions for other reasons, often based on someone who got sick after eating something, but not necessarily because of eating that something.

More and better knowledge can help us overcome queasiness at eating bugs, or getting "something" on our skin, or disposing of road kill. That is a good secondary purpose of Gory Details. Its primary purpose is to demystify many things that bother us, and help us learn "what's really going on." For example, in the chapter "Sniffing Out Sickness" we find that it's a good idea to get familiar with the scents of our loved ones. A change in that scent (besides the usual changes that accompany puberty) can be an indication of a medical condition that needs to be checked. While there are trained diabetes-sniffing dogs, for example, someone's sibling or parent or child is about as good as the dog, if they'll take the time to learn to smell. Strong odors and aromas reach nearly all of us. We need practice to discern more subtle scents.

A bit of advice from "I've Got You Under My Skin": if a bug gets in your ear, get a doctor's help to remove it without killing it. A dead bug in your ear rots pretty quickly, and if it is broken open (squashed), it is likely to have internal bacteria that could cause a lot of harm.

There are also chapters on vagaries of the mind, such as the poor folks who believe ants or other insects are crawling on them or burrowing in their skin. Some do themselves a lot of damage trying to dig out "samples" to show a doctor to prove that they are infested. There are several ways our minds can play tricks on us, and we learn of doctors who have effective (if not all that rapid) treatments in "The Invisibugs". Then, why are clowns so creepy? Why does the current generation only think of evil clowns, forgetting Bozo or Ronald McDonald? The chapter "Back Off, Bozo" has a partial explanation, in the "uncanny valley" that makes us recoil from, for example, robots that are really, really close to humanoid, but aren't quite there yet. Less realistic, "cute" robots get a better reception; we don't feel like they are trying to fool us.

Some people can't tell the difference anyway. A sad condition known as prosopagnosia, or face-blindness, prevents about a percent of people from recognizing even those they know well. At the other end of the spectrum are some "super recognizers", who do well scanning security video for known "persons of interest". It made me wonder if there are also those who are exceptionally good at recognizing someone not from the face, but bodily habits such as they way they walk, or gesture and so forth. How often have you seen someone you know at a distance too great to see their face, but knew who it was anyway?

Oh, and that green swimming pool? Of course there's pee in there. A large community pool could have 20 gallons of pee by the end of a day; a back yard in-ground pool gains a gallon or two per pool party. But urban legends of a chemical that turns red or blue around you if you pee in the water just aren't so. Urea is hard to detect with chemical indicators. But the burning eyes I used to get when I was on the swim team weren't just because of the chlorine. The chlorine in the pool reacts with urea to form a more potent, eye-stinging chemical. So use swim goggles. Now you see why they want you to shower both before and after using the pool at the Y. And don't drink the water.

I hope lots of folks like this book as much as I did. And if it helps a few of us get over some of our bad feelings, even better.