Mine Enemy

Harriet died due to natural causes. That's what the autopsy said, anyway, and that's a huge consolation to those of us who have to retrace her steps every day. Alcoholic berries, it was. Accompanied by a drop in temperature.

Oddly enough, Bertram died of the same causes the next week. Some of us started wondering aloud if it was an epidemic and, if so, how such a thing could come to be an epidemic. Pookie, the next canary who died in the mine, did not die of alcoholic hypothermia. She died of a congenital heart ailment. Fortunate, that. For us, of course. Not for poor Pookie.

I think most people know how we take canaries down into the coal mines to warn us of gas in the air. if there were gas in the air, the bosses would have to close the mine until the problem was corrected, of course. So, it's a good thing that all of the 427 canaries who have died in the mines in the last year died of natural causes. A variety of natural causes, of course.

Now that I come to think of it, there have been some human deaths, as well. All easily explained by normal, nonvocational causes, of course. Like that one last week, for instance. South Slobbovian Sleeping Sickness, I think it was. I mean, I feel fine. Just a little shortness of breath now and again. I'll have it checked out next month, maybe.