Ewww!

I think a lot of people don't really understand what is involved in being a librarian, and the potential for really strange and grotesque jobs that need to be done once and awhile. For example, today I got to clean up dried vomit off of a shelf that may have been there for years. I was minding my own business weeding books, and around about the honorable Robert Cormier section I noticed a crusty white substance that worried me a little, because on one of Cormier's books (Tunes for Bears to Dance to) there was a wee bit of mold, which is never good where books are involved, especially ones as good as Robert Cormier's. I thought that the whole shelf might have been similarly infected with mold, and that it had taken the form of crusty white stuff. Well let's just say I WISH it was mold ... when I took the books off and washed the shelf, I was met with the familiarly disgusting smell of vomit. I washed it off and bleached the shelf, and contemplated throwing out all the books in the surrounding, but settled for getting rid of some, re-ordering some, and wiping a few down. The weird thing, however, is that while it is partially crusted onto the bottom of some of the books, it is not splashed on any, which indicated to me that someone threw up on an empty shelf and put the books back on. WHY WOULD SOMEONE DO THAT?! It makes no sense to me whatsoever, and I also wonder why no one (myself included) saw this earlier. Surely the pages would have noticed it when shelving or shelf-reading books in that area ... but I guess not. I feel a bit ill now - does this qualify as a worker's compensation situation?!