Don't read this post directly before or after eating...

I just read in the news today that the SARS virus might have spread to humans through the civet cat--not through the eating of it (for it is a delicacy in China) but through the handling of the dead or live animal, or more especially from the feces of the animal. This story instantly reminded me of my recent reading of As You Like It, wherein Touchstone tells Corin the shepherd that he ought not to think kissing one's hands numerously was uncleanly after tending sheep, for "civet is of a baser birth than tar, the very uncleanly flux of a cat." By civet is meant the "thick yellowish musky-odored substance found in a pouch near the sexual organs of the civet" (Webster's). Ew!!!