The Grackle Story

My good friend Doug recommended to me in an earlier comment that I should write about my Grackle story.

Mind you, I don't remember how Doug got to know this story; I must have made a drunk email or a smaller comment on his own website, Pipeline (which I highly recommend).

But anyways: here is the Grackle story.

When I lived in Austin, every November we would get inundated with flocks of grackles. If you don't know what a grackle is, think of a cross between a pigeon and a crow. For those of you in the west, think of Magpies.

They would flock in like the extinct Passenger Pigeon. And that created a problem, because they would shit all over everything. So, the University took on a policy to fire shotgun blanks up in the air to scare them off from campus. Worked for the campus; not so much for the rest of the city.

That brings me back to my story. This one November night, I was working at the copy store I worked at, when I heard that one of my favorite bands was playing that night at a great old place that doesn't exist anymore called Liberty Lunch. The band was the (ironically) Raleigh band, the Connells, who I had loved since first hearing them on college radio at KSU. In fact, I had seen them before at the same venue just a couple of years before.

I was young enough at the time to decide that I must see this band that night, which happened to be a Wednesday. So after I got off of work, I went down to the show.

Now, this night was bitterly cold for Austin, Texas. It was about 18 degrees, Fahrenheit. As I drove to the show I did what everyone does: you look for a place close before you give up and park in a garage many blocks away. I was surprised to find an open spot just a half a block from the venue, and I took it. I couldn't believe my good luck.

So, I went to the show. Because it was a Wednesday, and so cold, there wasn't much of a crowd there. The band was most appreciative of those who did show up, and as a result played an extra-long concert and really interacted with the audience. It was a great, great, show.

But then it was time to leave. As I walked back to my car in the bitter cold, I kept hearing a strange thumping sound. THUMP, thump, THUMP, thump, et cetera. I couldn't tell where it was coming from. Then I got to my car. As it turned out, the thumping was due to the flock of Grackles that had roosted immediately above my car; they were shitting all over it. Every thump was a shit. Now I knew why this parking spot was so available when I went to the show. But, and I'm not exaggerating, it wasn't just a couple of shits on my car.

Apparently, there was a sufficient number of Grackles in the above tree, and it was cold enough, that an enormous load of shit had been dumped on my car. In fact, the entire car (silver in color) was completely covered, including the front and back windshields, in a lumpy white mass. The birds had literally shit over my entire car.

Now this brought a dilemma. How was I going to get home with shit all over my car? And, how could I drive home with any sense of respectability when my car was covered with bird shit?

I managed to streak my windshields with my washers enough to see out front. And I knew that there was a gas station with a car wash just across the river. Now: how to get there with a straight face?

It was impossible, of course. As soon as I tried to get across the river, I met a red light. And, of course, a car pulled up next to me. Embarrasing? Nowhere to begin. I finally got to the gas station and filled up so I could get the auto-wash. It was about 40% successful. Then I had to drive home with a car only half-covered in crap.

The next day I was finally able to go to a do-it-yourself car wash and spent nearly ten dollars to get all the shit off my car.

I consider myself an environmentalist, but if you want to kill a Grackle, I won't mind.