Today's topic is : Being nice to the cuddly vultures

Because my feet are a mess of deformity and calcification, and I have a tendency to stand up and walk around much of the time, I take a lot of painkillers. They are pretty cool. Taking them means that I can walk much more than I could if I didn't.I have even been considering acupuncture. Friends tell me that it works, and last week I read that even scientists now say that it works.

But I am now concerned at the damage I might do to wildlife. Y'see, I had this idea that when I kark it I want to be disposed of as naturally as possible. In fact my ideal post-death experience would be to be placed on the towers of silence, a place which I learned of by reading Rohinton Mistry novels. It's the ultimate act of recycling. Yet it seems that, like cows, I might have a knock on effect on wildlife.

Little did I know until I heard and read it today (http://www.guardian.co.uk/india/story/0,,1698682,00.html) that cattle take one of the same painkillers as I do. I don't know if they wash it down with a swig of San Pellegrino out of the bottle like I do, but they take it all the same. Diclofenac. In Britain it's called Voltarol (which sounds like a Harry Potter character if you ask me) and is an anti-inflamatory.

It turns out that in India it is being fed to cows (although I don't know if it is to treat their sprained ankles and other sports injuries). When the cows die they are dumped and then eaten by wild and feral dogs. Diclofenac is poisonous to dogs (which is useful to know if you have problem dogs who dig up your lawn and what-not. I have a problem cat that lives on my street and roams through the night jumping on cars and setting their alarms off - 12 times it happened last night) But diclofenac is also poisonous to vultures, and when the dogs die the vultures eat them and then they in turn get poisoned. So if you visit India watch out. You really don't want a vulture with sudden kidney failure landing on you from a great height.

But it's more serious than that. The towers of silence aren't working because so may vultures have been poisoned that there simply aren't enough left to pick at the carcasses, and the ones that are left are probably so fat that they can't fly up to the towers any more.

So I am worried. I don't want to find that I am like poisonous to any cuddly wild animals, or even non-cuddly ones. It would be pretty ironic if when I become extinct I accidentally help make another entire species head the same way.