The cardinals are out in force this year. Every day a pair or two peck at my backyard feeder, joined by all sorts of warblers and finches, swallows and blue jays. I love watching birds. They add joy to life.
So when the Illinois Department of Natural Resources suggested residents take down their bird feeders and clean them with bleach to combat an outbreak of highly-contagious avian flu, I thought: “Wait a second! What about MY rights? You mean some government agency is going to tell me what I can do in my own backyard? Based on what? Where is the science? How are we to know that this isn’t the work of Big Bleach, the Clorox people trying to get us to start emptying bottles into buckets, willy-nilly?”
