I first came across the word “zoonoses” in college days, when idly browsing in the fine university bookstore on the corner of Gower Street and Euston Road in London. The store had a good medical section — there was a big teaching hospital nearby — and ZOONOSES was the title of a book on display in the bookstore. (No trace of that book has survived on Amazon or even Abebooks, but I remember it clearly.) That kind of thing catches your eye.

Well, be careful about catching stuff: there may be a zoonosis in your future.