Carrion with whatever you were doing

Having just written about freon and carry-on luggage I was thrilled to find marvelous related stories in my morning newspaper. What on earth do people do without a morning newspaper to read while that first mug of coffee kicks in? Maybe they jump right out of bed and get the worm, or the carrion, as the case may be.

Thanks to the Dallas Morning News I learned of the troubles at Lake Bastrop park. The park had to shut down for awhile to deal with its increasing population of black vultures, which are an increasing annoyance with their habit of scratching vehicles and picking rubber objects. The whole situation sounds like a Heckle and Jeckle cartoon.

"Every morning, you've got to get up and run them off," said Martha Nickel, a camper at the park. "There are hundreds of them everywhere. It's amazing." In addition to leaving an abundance of excrement, the birds also pick the rubber off car windshields. Nickel said they pick at her cooking grill and destroyed her son's floating noodle. Park Director Susan Baxter-Harwell said the bird's are attracted to rubbery material because if feels like flesh.

Imagine what Alfred Hitchcock could have created if he had known about pool noodle-eating vultures!



*Buzzard is a misnomer for any New World vulture.
**Heckle and Jeckle were actually magpies.