rational geekery

I drive a blue saloon. Nothing fancy, just a smart dark blue 2.0ltr saloon. Anyway, each day I park at work, lock the car, and meander to my place of work mulling over whatever I heard last on the Today programme. Next to the car park are about twenty close-knit 25-ft conifers, and in these evergreen trees reside literally thousands of starlings. As I potter at my desk, many hundreds of these starlings begin circling the cars, dropping their fetid payload of digested worms and grubs on my (and other’s) metallic paintwork. Many colleagues have been reduced to washing their car everyday.

I myself am a lazy bastard when it comes to washing my car. I am quite happy to throw the best part of a fiver at Asda, and then sit in one of their machines as it slowly scratches my car, breaks off my FM aerial, and does a half-arsed job of cleaning it. Not this weekend though, luckily, on Saturday, Mrs. tyger and Nicky decided that washing our cars would be a great mummy-son activity, so as long as I provided ample buckets of hot water, they would beaver away happily outside. I myself made short work of the weekend newspapers (tis true, it’s a hard life). They did a cracking job.


My mortal enemy - the Starling

So this morning I have parked my car as far away from the blasted conifers and their inhabitants as possible. I will assess the damage at the end of the day, but I fear those winged Jackson Pollock’s will have already created their scatological masterpiece on the blank canvas that is my sorry automobile. Naturally I have complained about the birds, even, benevolently, offering to hire the necessary equipment to fog the infuriating little shits to their doom. Obviously this enormously practical solution was pooh-poohed by my office’s resident bunny-hugger: -

Bunny-hugger (probable animal rights-terrorist): “What have they done to you.”

Me (concerned, reasoned citizen): “Crapped on my car, that’s what.”

Bunny-hugger: “Well that can be cleaned. They have rights too.”

Me: “No they don’t, they’re just flying shit-machines – we should fog ‘em, I’ll do it.”

Bunny-hugger: “You’re a bully.”

Me: “Do I look Bovvered?”

Bunny-hugger: “Haarrfrrrumph”

It appears starlings are a ‘Red-List’ species, which means if I’m caught murdering one, I’ll be thrown in the tower. I’ll have to be devious. What’s the going rate on a peregrine falcon nowadays?



War on Starlings