December 20, 2010
For the Sounds of Death Drive Us Further South
In response to Deron’s question: can we stay here forever . . . despite freezing temperatures and snow even, I checked on the starlings last night and at least some are riding the winter out.
They are fleeing the above umbrella pine because the city of Rome hires these people to wear bunny suits and blare the most obnoxious & frightening sounds imaginable of birds or pigs being tortured. (If you don’t believe me see below fold.)
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Also, that’s one sorry-looking pair of Santas.
The cigarette-smoking santas were what i meant to capture until i noticed the bird-demonizers coming.
In Paris once I saw a French Big Bird who had removed his Big Bird head so he could take a cigarette break.
Do people not consider the bird demonizers a public nuisance?
I consider the bird demonizers to be beyond a nuisance, they are sub-humans. But most Romans probably welcome them as they don’t want their cars shat upon, or themselves. While I was taking this picture jess got splattered right on the forehead, said she heard it splat just like in the cartoons.
If people are afraid of a little bird shit, I say they can just wear hazmat bunny suits and quit paying thugs to frighten the starlings. I mean, you know, if I were the mayor of Rome, that’s what I’d say.
I’d let the starlings shit in my mouth just to taste where they’ve been.
Derek, we loved it when the starlings massed in the woods behind our house, circling above the trees, then leaving, then swarming back. We screamed and ran in echoing circles and couldn’t hear a thing other than the din of bird wings and cries. Some of the mothers yelled for kids to come in, afraid of the bird do. But we lived like little savages then, eating fruit from trees and vines (unwashed), swimming in ponds and lakes and ditches. I used to make my sister and friends play dead when the buzzards came, hoping they would swoop down and check us out. They flew low, but never fell for it. Smart buzzards.
And there was a strange, strange thing about the swarming flocks. Certain kids always got hit by the bird do and had to go in to clean up. Others, never, or almost. I have no idea why.
Hey Derek, great idea! Let us know where those birds have been, although your experiment would more likely tell you what they have been eating over the last 24 hours. You are one of a kind, my friend.