I think it was on an old Tom Lehrer album that I heard a little ditty called Poisoning Pigeons in the Park. That song has been popping into my head like a separate personality whenever I have a quiet moment lately. Except I've been thinking about poisoning grackles instead of pigeons, and in our backyard instead of the park.
Now, normally I'm not a violent person. Cranky, yes; sarcastic, sometimes; obnoxious, frequently and inadvertently; but not violent... normally. But these are not normal times.
Here's the deal:
Like a lot of old folks my wife and I like to feed the birds. Its kind of a harmless old guy thing to do and it has lots of advantages. We get to watch colorful little critters gliding gracefully by; sort of like a tropical fish tank without the need to clean fish poop out of a filter. We get to see our feathered friends raise their families. The mamas and papas sing to each other and their little ones (or did they break up a few years ago? I dunno. My memory isn't what it used to be.) and feed them bugs and caterpillars and stuff that would otherwise be eating our garden. Plus they make a lot of noise early in the morning that annoys the neighbors that keep us up all night drinking and hollering in their hot tub. And when the ligustrum berries are ripe the birds eat 'em and then crap purple junk all over that hot tub, and the noisy neighbors' cars. Which is sort of like karma in our minds, so it's kind of a cosmic experience to feed the birds.
Of course there are a couple of down sides. That purple stuff ends up on our cars too, but that's not much of a problem because we don't usually wash them anyway so you can hardly see it. Also the money we spend on seed kind of cuts into our fixed income but we're willing to live with that. Up until now the biggest problem that we've had to contend with is so-called white-winged doves. They are as big as pigeons and there are usually 15 or 20 of them in a flock. So when they hit the feeders the seed goes pretty fast. The birds that we really like to watch, like the blue jays, cardinals and finches, have learned to deal with the white-winged doves, though, so we still get to watch the pretty birds and they get enough to eat that they keep coming back to the feeders every day.
All of this changed a couple of weeks ago. Early one morning the sky grew suddenly dark and, when we looked up to see what was going on, we felt like Tippi Hedron in that Hitchcock movie. A flock of, oh... maybe a million, or at least fifty, grackles circled overhead and then dropped onto the backyard like the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz. From the noise they made I'm pretty sure they were on some kind of airborne Harleys and they were all carrying boomboxes... and probably 9 millimeters too. They pushed the other birds' faces in the sand and made disparaging remarks. Then they all jumped naked into the birdbath and lounged around drinking Raging Bitch IPA before they cleaned out the feeders. After that they started stealing hubcaps, painting graffiti on the walls and taking the English sparrows hostage. It's been like that for the last two weeks, and I'm starting to get homicidal.
I know that when you do something seemingly altruistic (but secretly self-serving) like feeding the birds, you're supposed to treat them all the same and not hang up signs like “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service” or “Only Birds Dressed in Primary Colors Need Apply”; and I've got to admit that when the sun hits them the grackles are this really cool metallic rainbow color, sort of like an oil slick; but come on! They only travel in massive flocks and they crowd out every other bird in the area. And eat them too. I saw a grackle chowing down on a nest full of baby mocking birds in the front yard last week while the parents cowered back in the tree and frantically tried to dial 911. Mocking birds! For the love of Mike! They're so fearless they chase crows away; but they're no match for the grackles.
So it hasn't been fun feeding the birds for the last two weeks. These days I find myself thinking about fricassee instead of watching the cardinals, and wondering what the consequences would be of following Tom Lehrer's suggestion.
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