May 18, 2005

• I don't know if this happens in other places, but in Texas the grackles tend to congregate in very large numbers (especially in the evening). One hundred or so in a single tree is a common sight. This, combined with the knowledge that they will attack people, is bound to make some folks upset. Why this is a news story? No clue/slow news day/man vs. nature interest piece.
• ahh, patita...we're supposed to be here making fun of attorneys and texans....what's with all this first hand information, logic, and intelligent deduction??? sheees....
• midwestern grackles are much more insouciant - they just sulk for a bit, then they conduct a fly-by gang-crap on you.
• I've got grackles hanging out in the vines on the house across my driveway. They're not pretty, they don't sound nice, they shit all over the cars. But the only time they've ever bothered anyone was when the owner of the house was doing some work on a ladder and threatened their nest, and then they went predictably nuts. This isn't news. Man Bites Grackle is news. ::::squelches impulse toward spewing pitiful diatribe about how much "we've" lost by setting "ourselves" apart from "nature"::::
• Tree full of grackles (.wav). Was trying to find the classic warbling song that ends with a shriek, which I hear it all the time here in Texas, but apparently it's never been posted to the Web.
• Oops! Sorry HuronBob, didn't get the memo. Will some jokes about Texas Lawyers help?
• Here's a short article about the ways they gather, with a little Quicktime movie (no sound on this machine, so I don't know if it has the grackle calls on it).
• patita...good work..... lawyer jokes...the best kind!
• now... patita..you did it again..right after you made things right with the lawyer jokes! But.. Let's point out that the article is talking about birds flocking during a migration... a bit of a different situation than a couple of birds protecting a nest.. I re-read the original cnn article, I can't see that they mention more than two birds....... darn whimpy texas lawyers.... a couple of little birds gonna knock them down and "injure" them... There hasn't been a tough texan since J.R.!
• it's just a "slice of life" local texas AP story that happened to be picked up because it's quirky. it's also currently (as of this posting) the seventh most-emailed story in yahoo, so obviously readers are getting a kick out of it. meanwhile, have you seen the update on the "finger in the chili" story? that just keeps getting weirder and weirder! i love "talkers." that's what these stories are called.
• I'm a horrible recidivist! I lost my way from fun, easy humor and ended up on the hard road of research. Kids, don't try this at home! another lawyer joke (referencing Texas), and maybe I'll get let out early on good behavior (source): A Mexican bandit made a specialty of crossing the Rio Grande from time to time and robbing banks in Texas. Finally, a reward was offered for his capture, and an enterprising Texas ranger decided to track him down. After a lengthy search, he traced the bandit to his favorite cantina, snuck up behind him, put his trusty six-shooter to the bandit's head, and said, "You're under arrest. Tell me where you hid the loot or I'll blow your brains out!" But the bandit didn't speak English, and the Ranger didn't speak Spanish. Fortunately, a bilingual lawyer was in the saloon and translated the Ranger's message. The terrified bandit blurted out, in Spanish, that the loot was buried under the oak tree in back of the cantina. "What did he say?" asked the Ranger. The lawyer answered, "He said 'Get lost, Gringo. You wouldn't dare shoot me.'"
• Two texan lawyers were out camping, the once a year trip they made to find the roots of their "texasness"... One evening one of the lawyers went into the brush to "drain the snake", when, ironically a real snake took offense and bit him right at the end of the plumbing (if you need this explained, just scoot on outa here!). He rushed back to camp, told his partner what had happened and his partner said, "lay quiet, I'll go into town and get the doctor.." and rushed off.. In town he finally found the only doctor, in the middle of a difficult delivery. The Doc said.."Sorry, I'm not going to be able to help right now, but it's easy enough for you to take care of. Just cut a small x at the site of the bite and suck the venom out. He'll be fine." "What's gonna happen if I don't do that?", the partner said. "Well," said the Doc, "he's gonna die." The fellow raced back to camp where his friend said "Where's the Doctor?". He told him the doc couldn't come. "Well what did he say?" His partner said.. "He said you're gonna die!"..
• The way I heard that one, the guy had a hook on his foot.
• This grackle attack happened 1/4 mile from my office. People way overreacted. You should see them in the winter time. They may not be nesting baby birds at that time, but there are a bunch of them. Millions. One block from my office, this January, there were enough in the trees along the street that I walked two blocks out of my way rather than get near them, because I had seen "The Birds" at an impressionable age. And talk about shit. The sidewalk was slick. Natural mortality ensured that there were several dead birds on the sidewalk each day. Funny thing is, they would alllll fly away at a certain point and not be seen there until the next morning at the same time.
• they're plotting, earwax
• That finger story *is* getting weird, SideDish! Whoa.
• Unfamiliar with the black grackle (all three North American grackles appear black on firsdt glance), but the purple grackle has a lovely, liquid warble, a very pleasant singer, though not as loud as many birds -- you have to be fairly close to hear them. For some years (about thirty) we had a hedge in which these birds liked to nest, and I'd hear and see them whenever I worked in the garden. At no time have I seen a purple grackle attack any other bird or animal or person, and I have often been within a few feet of many nesting pairs.
• They are not afraid of bees.
• A constable is not a lawyer. /pedantic
• A lawyer is a lawyer... "The grackles zeroed in on a lawyer who shooed a bird away before he tripped and injured his face, Jue said. The lawyer was treated for several cuts"
• Ah, missed that bit. Sorry. Carry on.
• how can ya miss a lawyer??? the smell alone....
• They are not afraid of bees. It would seem so. But perhaps if I'd picked up a fledgling or attacked one of the flock with a bottle, they could have become ugly. Just never have seen this. According to the story, these birds had some reason to suppose human beings in the vicinity inteded ill to a fledgling, and someone tried to attack a bird with a bottle. A great many wild -- and some domestic -- critters will act aggressivley in diefenxe of their young, when a threat is percieved.
• And as for the finger in the ice cream guy in Wilmington, North Carolina... I know that attorneys have been saying no to the guy who found the finger. I do not know if he has yet found an attorney, but I do know that most of the local attorneys wouldn't touch the case.
• I for one welcome our impending grackle leaders.
• grackle's are miserable birds they chase everything away except magpies at least magpies are colorful
• arrrrrrgh! wish those things would fly away ''''''''''''
• I agree. Grackles are loud, aggressive, annoying, and sometimes scary birds. They used to swarm on my parents' front yard, and when you had to walk through the yard they'd squawk and swoop at you. *shiver*
• Ahhhh! Grackles! Mabye they were trained birds like in the movie? Alfred Hitchcock employed mechanical, animated, and trained birds in the movie. cool no? Can you BBQ' Grackle?
• Grackles The day is fastened around the bronze irises of the grackles as they flash en masse through the yard. An airplane's dumb echo passes over, buzz seeping through clouds. A small toy in my gut is coming apart, the grass pounding fresh spikes at the sky. One grackle in the colony loosens a heavy worm from the earth leaving a dark inlet in its place. So these are the shy, unlit mines of the body's abiding. -- F. Daniel Rzicznek
• Grackles They were not one body. Yet they seemed held together by some order, their thick necks flickering with a blue-black iridescence, their yellow-circled pupils bright and cold. In a wave of differences that passed low over the surface of my yard, they picked it clean of morning's fritillaries and other summer gestures fall discards then settled on the hill behind the fence for several teeming minutes to remark its tapestry, each razored beak, each tail parting Sunday's gray air like a spear. I could tell you how they gathered up the darkness of my winter thought that day in mid-September, bundled it, black-ribboned, into sleek coats and lifted it from me just as you have imagined. But this would be a lie. I watched them comb the fields with interest, and, when their beaks' click had died, turned back to what I was. -- Lisa Williams
• To claim, at a dead party, to have spotted a grackle, When in fact you haven't of late, can do no harm. Your reputation for saying things of interest Will not be marred, if you hasten to other topics, Nor will the delicate web of human trust Be ruptured by that airy fabrication. Later, however, taking with toxic zest Of golf, or taxes, or the rest of it Where the beaked ladle plies the chuckling ice, You may enjoy a chill of severance, hearing Above your head the shrug of unreal wings. Not that the world is tiresome in itself: We know what boredom is: it is a dull Impatience or a fierce velleity, A champing wish, stalled by our lassitude, To make or do. In the strict sense, of course, We invent nothing, merely bearing witness To what each morning brings again to light: Gold crosses, cornices, astonishment Of panes, the turbine-vent which natural law Spins on the grill-end of the diner's roof, Then grass and grackles or, at the end of town In sheen-swept pastureland, the horse's neck Clothed with its usual thunder, and the stones Beginning now to tug their shadows in And track the air with glitter. All these things Are there before us; there before we look Or fail to look; there to be seen or not By us, as by the bee's twelve thousand eyes, According to our means and purposes. So too with strangeness not to be ignored, Total eclipse or snow upon the rose, And so with that most rare conception, nothing. What is it, after all, but something missed? It is the water of a dried-up well Gone to assail the cliffs of Labrador... -- Richard Wilbur, from "Lying"
• the wasting disease for whose sake must I buckle my control so tight about the waste of blackbirds shot in flight? this feral kitten in its coat of mange is simply shot that starving dog that downed the farmer's lamb and now is not these cannot grasp possessive laws of man but desperate try to live as best they can