I was once befriended by a germ who had been a horse innard -- lived along the banks of one of the main arteries and lived darned well, for a germ, getting first pick of the fresh Kentucky oxygen that coursed through the horse's lungs and heart. He, in turn, had a buddy -- also a germ -- who was never satisfied with his lot, and announced he was going to leave the artery and strike out on his own in search of adventure and a brighter, richer future. Although his fellows tried to dissuade him, this malcontent germ would hear nothing of it, and he set out wiggling one day and made his way across the great plains of the horse's internal cavities until he came to the banks of a secondary vein, which brought used blood back to the lungs for replenishment. The wandering germ found little good to sustain life there, and eventually starved to death.

"So you see," my friend the ex-horse germ said to me, "You should never change streams in the middle of a horse."

It is a lesson I have never forgotten.

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