While being forced to watch the evening news a few nights ago, I was shocked by a particular story being reported. It wasn’t the messy political campaigns of the two democratic front-runners, and it wasn’t even the severe weather that seems to be taking over the nation. It was the large-scale immigration of thousands of birds (grackles to be exact) to the downtown district of Fort Worth, Texas.I suppose to understand why this particular story was so distressing for me; one must understand that I have a kind of bird phobia. It began about two years ago when I was going through my “Hitchcock thriller” phase. At this time I watched several of his movies, from the little known, Rebecca, to the legendary, Psycho. Naturally, one of the movies I had an intense desire to watch was The Birds. The movie starts off friendly enough, just a few birds here and there, but then they turn on the small California town and before you know it people are getting killed by the attacking birds. Of course, this is fiction, but for some reason it began to strike a fear in me. The grackles of Fort Worth, Texas are not the man killing sort, but it does seem quite odd.
It is important to understand the thousands of birds taking up residence in the trees of this trendy downtown district have not hurt anybody. They have been a mess, an annoyance, and have detracted from the beauty of the town, but they are not flying throughout the city attacking school children like the famous scene Hitchcock depicted. However, the entire story does have that creepy, if not disturbing feel to it.
So, you may be asking yourself, “What are they doing to get rid of the birds?” Well, the city leaders in charge of coming up with a solution to this nuisance believe the answer lies in laser pointers. Yes, laser pointers. They have workers sitting outside and pointing the lasers at the trees so the birds will get scared and leave. So far this has not been very successful. Apparently, the birds are bright enough to figure out a light being shot towards them is not a threat. This is when the city brought in the big guns, or should I say hawks. As of now, trained hawks, a natural predator of the grackles, are being sent out to hunt and kill the thousands of birds in Fort Worth. I suppose we shall see if this resolution succeeds. It is just a shame the small California town taken over by birds in Hitchcock’s masterpiece didn’t have any laser pointers or hawks.
It is important to understand the thousands of birds taking up residence in the trees of this trendy downtown district have not hurt anybody. They have been a mess, an annoyance, and have detracted from the beauty of the town, but they are not flying throughout the city attacking school children like the famous scene Hitchcock depicted. However, the entire story does have that creepy, if not disturbing feel to it.
So, you may be asking yourself, “What are they doing to get rid of the birds?” Well, the city leaders in charge of coming up with a solution to this nuisance believe the answer lies in laser pointers. Yes, laser pointers. They have workers sitting outside and pointing the lasers at the trees so the birds will get scared and leave. So far this has not been very successful. Apparently, the birds are bright enough to figure out a light being shot towards them is not a threat. This is when the city brought in the big guns, or should I say hawks. As of now, trained hawks, a natural predator of the grackles, are being sent out to hunt and kill the thousands of birds in Fort Worth. I suppose we shall see if this resolution succeeds. It is just a shame the small California town taken over by birds in Hitchcock’s masterpiece didn’t have any laser pointers or hawks.
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