Calling All Falconers

You might recall one of the top grievances from Festivus this past year: “My car was named “Best Place to Poop” for the third consecutive year by all birds, ever.”

Yeah, that was mine. You see, a lot of the trees overhanging my work parking lot have berries. Birds eat the berries and immediately poop out the berries on my car.

I learned today that it’s not just my car they’re hitting. At a staff meeting today, several coworkers commented on the sheer volume of bird poop on their cars lately. One of them said that she had to pry her door open after several of the droppings had frozen in the seams.

Someone proposed that we build a canopy over part of the lot to protect the cars. Okay, decent suggestion. It wouldn’t look nice, though–it would block the view of the same trees and birds that we’re trying to protect our cars from.

I was about to jokingly suggest that we make all the birds wear diapers when a coworker brought up the best. idea. ever:

“Why don’t we get a falcon?”

First, just to throw this out there, from now on when I’m brainstorming with someone to solve a problem, that is going to be one of my answers. Because I’m pretty sure that adding a falcon to any situation makes it better.

Second, fun fact: When I was little, my answer to the “which animal would you be if you could be an animal” question was “cheetah” until I learned that peregrine falcons are the fastest animals on earth. 300 miles an hour when they dive, and they can spot rabbits from miles away. I’ve always wanted to do both of those things.

Third, why don’t we get a friggin’ falcon?! How amazing would that be?

My reply to the suggestion was, “I’ll see if we have it in the budget for a falconer.” Because you can’t have a falcon without a falconer.

Obviously we’re not going to actually do this. But just in case, do you know any good falconers? (The first person to reference the SNL skit “The Falconer” isn’t taking this seriously.)

6 thoughts on “Calling All Falconers”

  1. This is hilarious, and I have to give immense credit to Ansley for immediately finding you locally available falconers. I dare you to call them 🙂

    You could just get some menacing looking bird statues (owls) or scary eye balloons. You could also hire an intern to stay in the parking lot and “shoo” them away whenever they land above cars.

    Reply
  2. Plenty of falconers out here in Boise, Idaho! Probably the falconry capital of North America. You laugh about hiring someone to do this, but people actually DO hire falconers out here for situations similar to this. For instance, at many dairy farms Starlings are a big problem as they congregate in huge flocks and eat a lot of the food provided for the cows. Falconers have been brought it to try and ‘scare’ the flocks to moving somewhere else! So maybe you should budget for one…

    Reply
    • Neil–I completely forgot that we have a bonafide bird expert in the family! That’s awesome that people actually hire falconers from time to time. Is hiring a falconer once for a day or two good enough to scare away the pooping birds for good?

      Also, did my bird diaper idea have merit?

      Reply

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