Did Maedhros kill Laughter?

[Pitchwife]

Ingenious and elegant solution, phantom! The only (very minor) problem I can see with it is the explicit statement in the Narn that the plague was spread by "an ill wind from the North", which seems to indicate that the germ was transported from Morgoth's domain either by the air itself or by some intermediate airborne carrier.

Could it be that Lalaith's famous pet geese* played a fatal role here? It was in autumn that the plague came, the time when birds migrate south. Would it be too far fetched to suppose that the geese caught the disease in the far North and brought it to Dor-lomin on their way south? And remember that late autumn/early winter is also the time when geese are butchered and eaten (against the fervent protests of Lalaith, I'm sure; and what tragic irony that she fell victim herself to the plague that could have been avoided if her protests had been heeded...**)! Presumably, Húrin's people didn't understand the connection between consumption of goose meat and infection and thus mistakenly attributed the epidemy to the wind itself rather than the birds who sailed on it.

If we attempt to reconcile this idea with your theory about Maedhros' hand, we face the problem that geese are vegetarians and wouldn't have touched dead flesh - but ducks would (as I can testify from first-hand observation of the four who keep our garden slug-free); or if they didn't nibble on the hand itself they could have eaten worms which had previously fed on the hand. Maybe Lalaith's geese were actually ducks and were mistranslated by Aelfwine (or possibly Bilbo, depending on which version of the translator conceit you choose to follow) rendering Dírhavel's Sindarin original in his native tongue? After all, both belong to the family Anatidae, and I've met people who couldn't tell one from the other...

* (mentioned only in an obscure textual variant to the Narn which I can't find at the moment, but I suppose Nerwen might be able to help me out...)
**(Alternatively, maybe her protests were heeded after all, but she was the first to catch the disease by cuddling those dratted birds all the time...)