Birds are Evil and I Hate Them
Apparently (fortunately) I am not the only one who thinks they will grow so big that, eventually, they will eat us and shit on our graves.
Columnist Pete McMartin talks with Ruth Godlovitch Wednesday while out looking for the elusive marauding crows in east Vancouver. 'I happen to be a bird lover and I love all birds,' she says.
Photograph by: Ward Perrin, Vancouver Sun, Vancouver Sun
We got an e-mail recently from a Joseph Z -- no surname, just the Zorro-like consonant. It was about crows.
He wrote:
"I just wanted to know if anyone was doing any stories on the Crow problem in Vancouver. I live at 13th and Main St. and they are starting to become a real problem. They are swooping and chasing people. I recognize that they have nests around but it is getting ridiculous. I watched a little girl get chased down the street yesterday and this morning I had one dive at me repeatedly . . . We can't even go on our balcony with out getting attacked. Something has to be done . . . Come walk by 229 East 13th and you will see for yourself."
I went by to see for myself, mainly because I had nothing else even remotely interesting to write about, but also because crows, for some reason, inspire a wild-eyed divergence of opinion among urbanites that is, well, weird. This may be because, among all birds, they give themselves over easiest to anthropomorphizing (I blame Heckle & Jeckle) and people like to describe them as "devious," "intelligent," "bullies," "resourceful," etc., etc., as if they were talking about an Elmore Leonard character rather than a bird. I am neither here nor there on "the Crow problem," as Joseph Z identifies it; all I ask is they not crap on the upholstery of my convertible, which they do with Stuka-like precision. Which is not to say I believe crows to be the Nazis of the bird world.
Anyway, 229 East 13th St. turned out to be a smallish apartment building a little down at the heels. Joseph Z was nowhere in sight. No one answered the buzzers on the intercom. A single crow sat perched on the edge of the building's roof. It was not even remotely interested in savagely attacking me or Sun photographer Ward Perrin. It just sat there in the sun. Ward took some photos of it.
A man named Roland Chapman walked by on the sidewalk. He lived in a fourplex just down the street. I asked Roland if he had been attacked by crows recently and he looked at me like maybe he was about to become a headline in a crime story. Then I asked him what he thought of crows and he said crows were "pretty smart dudes." Then he said he didn't have problems with crows, but with seagulls and, "in particular," pigeons, which, as he put it, he wished the neighbourhood crows would "destroy."
He and the other residents of the fourplex, he said, were going to have to put up $3,600 -- $900 each -- to pay a guy to put up spikes along the roof line and netting under the soffits because the pigeons had taken to roosting there. We looked up at Roland's roof. Three pigeons sat on the small slope of a gable, cooing. The gable roof and the sides of the fourplex were streaked with what looked like whitewash.
"Oh, f--- those pigeons," Roland said, then he said he couldn't spend any more time talking because he was going to play golf.
At that moment, an elderly lady named Ruth Godlovitch walked by. She was pushing one of those wheeled walkers, the kind with hand brakes. She had a sweet face, and I asked her what she thought about crows. She said: "They're fun! They're interesting birds, but I wonder why people complain about them? I happen to be a bird lover and I love all birds."
Ruth said she happened to be 91 years old. That was how she put it: she "happened" to be 91, as if her age was a source of some surprise to her. She said she was originally from Montreal and wasn't too sure about the neighbourhood when she first moved here but now she loved it and she lived in the seniors home at the end of the block on the corner, which was very nice, and she had lived there for six years, at which point I remarked on the wisteria growing on the arbour on the patio of the seniors home and she said, oh yes, lovely isn't it!
Then she said she lived on the fourth floor of the seniors home, the top floor, and her window looked out on a row of big chestnut trees across the street. The tops of the chestnut trees were level with her apartment, she said, and on a good day she would watch the crows flock into the tops of trees and she would watch them there.
Ruth and I looked up at the chestnut trees. They were in flower -- the flowers were on big upright spikes like bottle brushes. The sky was blue and cloudless above the trees and the trees swayed back in forth in the spring breeze as if they were moving to music. There wasn't a crow in sight.
http://www.vancouversun.com/Technology/McMartin+Vancouver+crows+bullies/1615528/story.html
Columnist Pete McMartin talks with Ruth Godlovitch Wednesday while out looking for the elusive marauding crows in east Vancouver. 'I happen to be a bird lover and I love all birds,' she says.
Photograph by: Ward Perrin, Vancouver Sun, Vancouver Sun
We got an e-mail recently from a Joseph Z -- no surname, just the Zorro-like consonant. It was about crows.
He wrote:
"I just wanted to know if anyone was doing any stories on the Crow problem in Vancouver. I live at 13th and Main St. and they are starting to become a real problem. They are swooping and chasing people. I recognize that they have nests around but it is getting ridiculous. I watched a little girl get chased down the street yesterday and this morning I had one dive at me repeatedly . . . We can't even go on our balcony with out getting attacked. Something has to be done . . . Come walk by 229 East 13th and you will see for yourself."
I went by to see for myself, mainly because I had nothing else even remotely interesting to write about, but also because crows, for some reason, inspire a wild-eyed divergence of opinion among urbanites that is, well, weird. This may be because, among all birds, they give themselves over easiest to anthropomorphizing (I blame Heckle & Jeckle) and people like to describe them as "devious," "intelligent," "bullies," "resourceful," etc., etc., as if they were talking about an Elmore Leonard character rather than a bird. I am neither here nor there on "the Crow problem," as Joseph Z identifies it; all I ask is they not crap on the upholstery of my convertible, which they do with Stuka-like precision. Which is not to say I believe crows to be the Nazis of the bird world.
Anyway, 229 East 13th St. turned out to be a smallish apartment building a little down at the heels. Joseph Z was nowhere in sight. No one answered the buzzers on the intercom. A single crow sat perched on the edge of the building's roof. It was not even remotely interested in savagely attacking me or Sun photographer Ward Perrin. It just sat there in the sun. Ward took some photos of it.
A man named Roland Chapman walked by on the sidewalk. He lived in a fourplex just down the street. I asked Roland if he had been attacked by crows recently and he looked at me like maybe he was about to become a headline in a crime story. Then I asked him what he thought of crows and he said crows were "pretty smart dudes." Then he said he didn't have problems with crows, but with seagulls and, "in particular," pigeons, which, as he put it, he wished the neighbourhood crows would "destroy."
He and the other residents of the fourplex, he said, were going to have to put up $3,600 -- $900 each -- to pay a guy to put up spikes along the roof line and netting under the soffits because the pigeons had taken to roosting there. We looked up at Roland's roof. Three pigeons sat on the small slope of a gable, cooing. The gable roof and the sides of the fourplex were streaked with what looked like whitewash.
"Oh, f--- those pigeons," Roland said, then he said he couldn't spend any more time talking because he was going to play golf.
At that moment, an elderly lady named Ruth Godlovitch walked by. She was pushing one of those wheeled walkers, the kind with hand brakes. She had a sweet face, and I asked her what she thought about crows. She said: "They're fun! They're interesting birds, but I wonder why people complain about them? I happen to be a bird lover and I love all birds."
Ruth said she happened to be 91 years old. That was how she put it: she "happened" to be 91, as if her age was a source of some surprise to her. She said she was originally from Montreal and wasn't too sure about the neighbourhood when she first moved here but now she loved it and she lived in the seniors home at the end of the block on the corner, which was very nice, and she had lived there for six years, at which point I remarked on the wisteria growing on the arbour on the patio of the seniors home and she said, oh yes, lovely isn't it!
Then she said she lived on the fourth floor of the seniors home, the top floor, and her window looked out on a row of big chestnut trees across the street. The tops of the chestnut trees were level with her apartment, she said, and on a good day she would watch the crows flock into the tops of trees and she would watch them there.
Ruth and I looked up at the chestnut trees. They were in flower -- the flowers were on big upright spikes like bottle brushes. The sky was blue and cloudless above the trees and the trees swayed back in forth in the spring breeze as if they were moving to music. There wasn't a crow in sight.
http://www.vancouversun.com/Technology/McMartin+Vancouver+crows+bullies/1615528/story.html
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posted by Bellybutton at
2:24 PM
1 Comments:
i was attacked by a crow, so i'm not sympathetic whatsoever. I used to live near Main and 13th, and when I was walking home I got chased for a whole city block by some skydiving crow. I could've hit it with my bag, but that would've been wrong, yes? So instead, I ran down the block as it swooped after me. i'll never forget the look in its eyes and its talons reaching out to grab at me. Ugh!
Mostly, it was just embarassing and I remember people on the other side of the street just staring in disbelief at what was happening.
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