Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - Attack bird causes panic in parking lot

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Brooks Peterson

Monday, June 11, 2001
Attack bird causes panic in parking lot

Journalists are not unacquainted with strife. Trouble Is Our Business, we jauntily tell one another.
   However . . . inter-species hostilities are something else again.
   Ever see Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds"? The premise, as you will recall, is that the world's entire bird population suddenly develops an Attitude and begins pecking every available human to bits.
   A similar, if less apocalyptic, scenario has been playing itself out at your local newspaper for the last few days, and I think it's time we leveled with the readers about it.
   Would you believe "The Birds II: The Caller-Times Held Hostage"?
   There I am, a couple of days ago, stumbling away from work, just passing the flagpole, when all of a sudden I hear an odd, almost metallic "whirrr" and detect some sort of motion way out at the edges of my peripheral vision . . .
   Curious, I says to myself.
   Options: Keep cool, or run
   Then the attack begins in earnest: A seemingly deranged mockingbird takes another run at me, making it clear that he/she is not disposed to share his/her space with me, and proposes to make me pay for my effrontery.
   One option in such situations is simply to retain one's cool and refuse to be stampeded by an insignificant little bundle of feathers, claws and bad temper.
   I, however, went for Option B: ignominious retreat. C'mon: Some academicians believe birds descend from the dinosaurs. The avoirdupois is definitely lacking, but the surly disposition could be right out of "Jurassic Park." And there's always that ol' Hitchcock factor.
   (Besides, I have vivid memories of how the neighborhood mockingbirds turned the family cat's life into a nightmare back in my younger days. A couple would gang up on her, swooping and dive-bombing the poor creature until there was nothing for it but for her to seek shelter in the garage. The sight of this proud feline slinking to cover drove home the fact that things on the old bird-cat interface don't always play out in the cat's favor.)
   I went home feeling deeply chagrined at having been dissed by a bird. At work the next day, however, I learned that others had encountered the same sort of avian effrontery. One colleague was convinced the bird was intent on swiping strands of her hair, which she had just had highlighted. Another was seen in the parking lot, swinging wildly at the bird with a purse.
   Through the length and breadth of the building, the talk was of belligerent birds: Respected members of the journalistic community (that's not an oxymoron) had been heard screaming abuse at the birds. (Perhaps not an altogether bad thing: If we're screaming at birds, we're not screaming at one another.)
   And there had been talk. Dark talk. Talk of . . . sanctions. Of what the intelligence community cryptically refers to as "wet work," or, alternatively, "termination with extreme prejudice."
   In other words, the Harper Lee Option. (You know: "To Kill a Mockingbird." Get it?)
   Birds are on notice
   Happily, cooler heads prevailed. Once the passions of the moment had subsided, the higher-ups recognized the folly of such a course. (Ever faced a birder in full battle array? Enough said.) We did the sensible thing:
   We promulgated a memo.
   Disseminated to all the troops, this communiqué advises us that Animal Control has been consulted, and that what we have here is a "very protective" mama bird. "This behavior is common, but should last for only a couple of weeks."
   Oh, and for any hotheads on the staff: "They also said that mockingbirds are a protected species." (Which raises the inevitable question: Who is to protect us from the protected species?) We are advised to be "patient and accommodating."
   Well, OK: I'll give it a shot. I'm even open to negotiations. But if the abuse continues, self-defense will leave us no option but to resort to the ultimate weapon:
   The Doomsday Memo.
   You're on notice, birds. Let it be on your heads (and, preferably, not on my car).

   Brooks Peterson can be reached by phone at 886-3772, or by e-mail at petersonb@caller.com.


Brooks Peterson can be reached by phone at 886-3772, or by e-mail at petersonb@caller.com

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