Is your pantry ready for lice?

A good friend of mine wrote to me this morning in some horror that her daughter has contracted a bit of a case of head lice. (I guess, really, there is no "bit of a case of lice." That would be like being a little bit pregnant. If your kid has them you have to go through the whole comb-out hassle whether you've spotted one of the unholy little organisms or dozens and dozens of their wretched nits.)

My friend is actually not that squeamish about de-lousing, but she is surprised her daughter contracted lice given that their fairly cautious approach to coat-room hat swaps and the like.

The real tragedy here is that in order to do the comb-out, my foodie friend had to do use the fancy, kibbutz-grown and pressed olive oil that she carted - at some expense to her carry-on capacity and spine - back from a recent trip to Israel. Just think of the salads that will go undressed because of this unfortunate lack of planning.

The moral of this story is not to fret too much about toques and scarves. There's virtually no hope of preventing your child from getting lice when they're hunched over the sand table in February. Just be prepared and have some really, really unvirginal olive oil - the kind pressed in Haliburton instead of Haifa, for instance -  on hand to deal when it's your turn.