Wednesday, November 14, 2007

The Birds.

"Oh, feral cats are bad! They kill songbirds!"

Not e-damn-nough of them, in my opinion. For instance, there are still enough songbirds to fill the branches of the cedar tree next to my house for a few weeks every Autumn, where they cheerfully dine on the berries and cover my car in a tapenade-like paste so thick that it sounds like a gentle rain as it falls.

When I run the universe, first things I'm doing away with are songbirds and cedar trees.

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can you add geese to the list?

I hate those things.

-SayUncle

Jay G said...

At least geese provide us with foie gras, which sends PETA into cardiac arrest.

So they *are* good for *something*...

BobG said...

Birds and mulberries are the worst; everything is covered in purple birdshit, and it is really hard on car finishes.

Anonymous said...

Ummm... don't park under cedar trees?

Tam said...

The driveway's kinda hard to move.

Anonymous said...

"The driveway's kinda hard to move."

Pffffft. That's slacker talk. Where's your bellyfeel for maximizing your boundaries! Enable your empowerment! Push the box through the envelope! And other such rah-rah corp-speak phrases you hear at Amway conventions that HR departments like to pilfer...

Saw a small feral cat getting carried off by a red-tailed hawk the other day. I giggled and said something along the lines of "there's your damn Walt Disney, right there." Of course, no one was with me so it didn't have the impact I would have liked. Anyway, a merlin or sharp-shinned hawk will probably be along shortly to run the little buggers off/eat them.

Tam said...

"Saw a small feral cat getting carried off by a red-tailed hawk the other day. I giggled and said something along the lines of "there's your damn Walt Disney, right there.""

Heh.

Most Disneyfied nature lovers that really love nature haven't been waist deep in it.

Anonymous said...

Chainsaw?

Anonymous said...

I most definitely would add Canadian Geese; subspecies Maximus to the list of those animals that absolutely, unequivocally NEED extinction. Try raising corn or soybeans next to a pond they visit on a regular basis.

And for those PETA types who feel the geese should rule over man, how about paying up the $6,000 worth of corn they destroyed in 72 hours a few Junes ago, and NO, neither Federal or private crop insurance will pay for goose damage to crops. Such disasters fall into the same hole as nuclear exchanges and civil war. Insurance people have caught on to how determinal Canadian Geese really are. Insurance underwriters are many things, but foolish and stupid are not among them.

Praying for a world without Canadian Geese, All The Best,
Frank W. James

Anonymous said...

They're Canada geese, and they're good eatin ifn you fix them right. Im conserving apostrophes.

You don't have an excess of geese; you have a shortage of hunters. We can fix that.

An excess of feral cats is very bad indeed. Feral cats vectored feline leukemia to my native American black-footed ferret. We have been very successful at controlling cats' natural predators, at adding to their population, and at eliminating their traditional prey. But then, we do that with humans too.

Disney note (youse can look it up): the translation of Bambi, wherein the hunters became bad guys, was by noted communist spymaster Whittaker Chambers.

Anonymous said...

"They're Canada geese, and they're good eatin ifn you fix them right."

You've got to be sure to get the mud vein. :)

Anonymous said...

jeff, you're not an Ohioan, are you? Because you sure hunt like one...

"...Leave it in the smoker for three whole days. Then, throw away the carp and eat the board."

For many and many a year, Archbold was the gefilte capital of the world. And nobody there ate it.

Anonymous said...

With all due respect (as well as a good deal of restraint) what I have is TOO MANY GEESE; Canada, Canadian, or just plain f@cking geese. The pond is located on the property of a regional trucking terminal next door and everything lies immediately next to a major interstate highway. The trucking outfit is/was extremely non-cooperative and the lady at US Fish & Wildlife in charge of geese for the midwestern portion of the United States was even more unsympathetic.

When she asked me what I wanted to do with the geese? I replied, Kill them. She too mentioned the three separate hunting seasons, but due to the physical circumstances the best yield from that is dead geese in the one'es and two'es from a whole bunch of 'hunters'. I said I wanted to kill them in the thousands, if not the tens of thousands. And I still consider that only a good start.

World Peace starts with millions of dead 'Canada' geese.
All The Best,
Frank W. James

Anonymous said...


'Saw a small feral cat getting carried off by a red-tailed hawk the other day. I giggled and said something along the lines of "there's your damn Walt Disney, right there."'


That happened in "Benji the Hunted".

Anonymous said...

Frank W., if you want what the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles called "the great death of birds" you were talking to the right agency. When we go over the edge and poison out whole species, it's the CDC types who do it. But that US Dept has only an advisory capacity to your state's hunting agency, usually housed within some variant of 'Natural Resources.' They have these meetings, see, where hunters, property owners and farmers get to share information on where the animals need killing. "One'es and two'es" are daily bags; they add up fast, and control of a local overpopulation seldom takes more than one hunting season. Members of hunting clubs regularly represent themselves at such meetings, and get pretty good response. That's who to talk to.

I know it would be convenient and all to dial 1-800-FEDERAL and have all annoying things die in the tens of thousands; see Marko on that.

Don't you know any gun nuts?

Anonymous said...

A cure for aggressive park/golf course (year-round resident) Canada Geese: a handful of cracked corn or a slice of bread, and a wiffle ball bat.

If done often enough early in the year, the offending geese will move elsewhere to raise young. No parent, (at least none with 'the sense God gave geese') will raise young in a dangerous location.

Which would explain North Omaha....

Anonymous said...

And I cured my birdcrap tree problem with a midnight visit to the problem tree with a BB gun and a flashlight. I killed 4 or 5 dozen of the little bastards in about an hour. That was 6 years ago and though I still get an occasional bit of crap on the truck, flocks of birds avoid it like it's some kind of Indian Burial Ground......

Anonymous said...

Comatus: Your optional solutions are neither new, nor original and believe me they have all been thoroughly exhausted. (Successful hunting usually requires 'cover' of some sort and in this location there is none. Think flat as a pool table.) The bottom line is the Maximus subspecies of Canadian goose in northwestern Indiana exists in quantities that come close to infinity.

And NO the state of Indiana has NO control over this problem as the regional Indiana DNR biologist, Bob Porch, has explained to me upon multiple occasions. they are restrained by an international treaty which is enforced by the feds.

Whether you know it or not, the Feds act like closet Hindus and in turn view the Canadian goose as something scared.

I still say World Peace begins with thousands of dead Canadian geese.

All The Best,
Frank W. James

Anonymous said...

Frank W., I say again, it's a
"scared"="sacred" funny how a keyboard can reveal hidden meaning.

Canada goose. Don't insult Canadians unless...ah, go ahead. Insult Canadians. They love it.

Over here in the state next to you, we've had real big changes in season, bag limit and sex of Canada limits, actually with the backing of USDA rangers in the national wildlife preserve where Ike used to shoot.

One good duck-blind (I've never seen a goose-blind. Why?) solves all those pool table issues. And then there's blind-boats, a gimme.

I'm suspicious of what the state people told you. You're not bothering them, are you?

Tam said...

"Don't you know any gun nuts?"

That was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, right, Mr. Comatus?