Do you easily become attached to small animals? Well, here's a small animal that could easily become attached to you.

Meet Trichomonas vaginalis -- a one-celled creature responsible for one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases in America, and capable of producing a green, fishy discharge that will make your tender cervix as red as a strawberry. This parasite's favorite home is a young woman's vagina, but the whip-tailed protozoan is always ready to hop aboard a passing penis as easily as a typical New Yorker jumps the subway. Few symptoms occur in men, but male carriers of the bug could eventually suffer an even worse fate, since long-term infection has been linked in a small number of cases to a rare fast-spreading form of prostate cancer.

Don't despair. A single treatment with two grams of Flagyl will eradicate the infection, although you should arrange to have your partner treated at the same time -- a task that might test your powers of diplomacy.

You should avoid sex for a few days after treatment, although when your partner learns the details, it might be quite a bit longer than that.

And in a final cruel twist -- you can forget about drowning your sorrows with a drink. Flagyl produces a severe reaction to alcohol.