My mom has a bird (name unknown - we just call him "the damn bird") that's about 7 years old. For about two of those years, the bird has been kept in the basement apartment, where my sister also resides.

My sister smokes over a pack a day. When she's home and on the computer, she's smoking pretty consistently.

And yet, somehow, the bird lives on.

The way I see it, this is proof that the warnings about secondhand smoke are a load of bunk. I mean, if SHS is so terribly, horribly unsafe, why is the bird still alive? I'm not saying smoking is good for you, or even that secondhand smoke isn't disgustingly annoying if you don't smoke (and sometimes even if you do), but if a little ol' bird can survive two years of nonstop SHS, can it really be so bad?