E-Mail This Article to a Friend BIRD WATCHING Avian flu marches on BY DAVID S. BERNSTEIN

Not since John Cleese walked into a pet shop have the British paid so much attention to a dead parrot. This one isn’t so funny; it died of the H5N1 bird-flu virus.

The European Commission quickly called for a one-month ban on exotic-bird imports. This came after the 25-nation European Union had already banned imports of live poultry from Croatia, where swans recently died of the virus.

The spread of the disease among poultry in Asia and Eastern Europe has also continued, with new reports of 2100 infected geese in China, a similar number in Mongolia, and a first outbreak in Russia’s Tambov region, south of Moscow. And more human cases have been confirmed: two in Thailand, and one in Indonesia.

But the British parrot brings the disease, for the first time, within the EU. And more such diagnoses may be confirmed by the time you read this. Dead wild ducks and geese in Germany have been taken for testing, as have dead fowl in Portugal.

Meanwhile, as of press time the White House has yet to unveil the avian-flu "national preparedness plan" that Health and Human Services secretary Michael Leavitt promised by the end of this month.

Closer to home, Paul J. Cote Jr. was elevated this week from acting to permanent commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Asked for his plans to improve the state’s readiness for bird flu, his office e-mailed this response from Cote: "While the timing and severity of a pandemic is unknown, we are working with our healthcare partners to ensure that everything is being done to make Massachusetts as prepared as possible."

Whew. Now don’t you feel safer?