Birds in this case though…
I have a four block walk between offices that I do at least a couple of times a day, and it’s interesting to see the differences between morning/evening walks and the lunchtime walks.
Yesterday one of ‘those’ people was out haranguing the people sitting out on the benches enjoying their lunches. You see, it’s like this…
The birds, mainly finches and sparrows, and an couple of what look like mockingbirds show up around 1100 in the morning, and stick around until about 1300. They are obnoxious panhandlers for food, and the mockingbirds have been known to grab a half a sandwich if they get the chance…
So I’m heading back to my office and I hear this high pitched voice, and it’s an old hippie woman, probably 60ish, grey hair frizzed out, wearing a tie dyed t-shirt and ratty shorts, and those funky sandals they wore back in the 60s. She’s ‘lecturing’ a couple of 20somethings about feeding the birds, and how they shouldn’t do that, but now they need to come every day and feed the birds, cause if they don’t the birds will die, because they won’t be able to forage for themselves, and this winter they’ll all fall out of the trees dead…
I noticed an older gent sitting on the next bench just shaking his head and we made eye contact; he smiled and shrugged, and she turned on him. He told her to shut her pie hole and go away, which prompted another tirade, allowing the 20somethings to escape. I hauled ass too!
But it does remind me of a story from out of the past…
Back in the day, we had explosives testing ranges located in the water to test for various things…
One of those was up near San Francisco, and it used sirens to warn people of various time intervals to the explosion. 30 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes and 1 minute if I remember correctly…
It being Kalifornia, the Navy got sued…
So they closed the range…
And got sued again because the seagulls and pelicans had been ‘conditioned’ by the sirens to feed…
Seriously!!!
The birds would start congregating on the pilings when they heard the 30 minute siren, would sit there through the 10 and 5 minute ones, and take off when the 1 minute siren sounded. After the explosion it was a feeding frenzy, as all the dead fish floated to the surface. The econazis said because of the long use of the range, the birds would ‘starve’ because they would no longer have fish ‘delivered’ to them!
Thankfully the 9th circus didn’t get involved, and a judge with common sense threw the case out, pointing out that the range was only used 2-3 times per year, so the birds HAD to be feeding somewhere in the interim.
Early in my career I was on a boat supervising a team of divers. We were using explosives to sever the legs of offshore structures in order to remove them. After we set off the first set of charges, the captain (of Cajun heritage, of course) comes down on the back deck with a long handled net and starts scooping up the dead fish.
We’re getting too old for lectures by non-subject matter experts.
The People’s Republik of Kalifornia has a habit of gravitating to every whacky freak who comes up with an idea and brands it “organic”, “environmental”, etc.
I fed hummingbirds publicly (front yard) but was cautioned that by doing so, they would become dependent and when it came time to migrate, they would die. My solution was to move the feeder to the back yard.
Perfect.
And wasn’t the sonar training done off the coast by the tin can sailors causing whales to die or something?
At Ft. Stewart, the guys in the Tank Troop were no longer allowed to fire the war shot sabots because “radioactive run off into the Savannah River”.
Now, I’m a proud member of the CCA; but, I really doubt that depleted uranium sabot tank rounds fired in essentially Hinesville are gonna wind up in the Savannah River.
you mean there’s another way to fish… for God’s sake don’t tell pa.
SMH – you can’t make this stuff up.
“She’s ‘lecturing’ a couple of 20somethings about feeding the birds, and how they shouldn’t do that, but now they need to come every day and feed the birds, cause if they don’t the birds will die, because they won’t be able to forage for themselves, and this winter they’ll all fall out of the trees dead…”
…I’d bet she has no problem with the Welfare Entitlement Establishment, though.
Also perfect.
Ya suppose she’s the same whacko who wrote the letter advising hunters to buy their meat from the supermarket “where no animals are harmed”?
The wife (The Hot Chick from Philly) and I were visiting Chincoteague Island for a couple of days and were in town looking around. Some small children were feeding potato chips to the ducks. And almost as if you had written the script, a somewhere in her early 20’s female told the children they should not feed the ducks because they would get used to eating potato chips. My wife looked at my face and bum rushed me away. My wife did not need telepathy to know what I was going to say.
That’s it! She is from Kalifornia. Hey, I thought you retired. Why do you still have an office?
PE- Is Cajun, I’d expect NOTHING less…LOL
Gerry- Oh hell yes!
LL- LOL, that works!
SPE- So y’all are the guys responsible for those three toed fishes! 🙂
Dammit- M-80’s work, but not as well… Just sayin…
Tim- Oh so true!
John- Probably not, but I didn’t stick around to find out!!!
Rev- LOL, probably!
John- Heh, so you were NOT going to be polite, right? 😀
Fargo- Not yet, working on it… Dec!!!
Maybe you can locate that hippie and alert her to the horrid things being done to prairie dogs in Boulder. That would get her to move and in Boulder she would just be scenery.
This so reminds me of the recent photo showing a bear sitting at a park bench. The caption went something like: Please don’t feed the bears or they become used to the handouts. Which is why we can’t stop Food Stamps and associated programs, because they’re used to the handouts.
IIRC, long time ago the Israelis used to wire together captured land mines and go “fishing” in the Med.
WSF- LOL, I’m staying as far away from her as possible..
WN- Right on all counts… 🙂
Hey old NFO;
Funny..Hippies haranguing people about creating dependency in animals….but they are all for the dependency of people in government….I guess animals are “pure” and worth saving…and people arn’t…according to them
And did you know that on the rare occasion when I am forced into a Whole Foods expedition, that it is a lot of fun to wander away from the spouse, don those really big and really dark sunglasses that certain mature folks are wont to wear, and then run the cart into hippies? After you hit them, or run over their feet, just apologize and mumble and go to another aisle.
I’m beginning to view the US as a topographically-deformed pool table: it seems all the out-of-round balls roll to the west (CA) and southeast (FL).
Remind me of a seafood shack in Connecticut that has signs warning diners NOT to leave their picnic table unattended. Of course those who ignore such signs find themselves treating a seagull to a lobster dinner.
+1 Bob