Anyone have a Galileo thermometer? Did it ever break?

My wonderful wife's wonderful exercise ball just fell from its wonderful perch atop the wonderful wall unit, sending the wonderful Galileo thermometer next to it falling several wonderful feet to its wonderful death and creating a wonderful mess of glass and wonderful mysterious liquid.

Anyone know what this liquid is made of? Am I a dead man? Cursory web searches have revealed it's probably not mercury, but I'm still freaked. Any help will be much appreciated.

 

From:

http://www.howstuffworks.com/question663.htm


Based on a thermoscope invented by Galileo Galilei in the early 1600s, the thermometer on your co-worker's desk is called a Galileo thermometer. A simple, fairly accurate thermometer, today it is mostly used as decoration. The Galileo thermometer consists of a sealed glass tube that is filled with water and several floating bubbles. The bubbles are glass spheres filled with a colored liquid mixture. This liquid mixture may contain alcohol, or it might simply be water with food coloring.

 

Thanks mark. I also read something that said the liquid was harmful or fatal if swallowed. Probably not a big deal to me, but I still worry about one of the dopey cats even after mopping the mess up.