Roll out those lazy, crazy, hazy days of summer!
Those days of soda and pretzels and beer.
It was a beautifully hot summer's day. I decided to sit out on our back deck to do a little reading and writing and looking around. The birch buds had opened, and shiny yellowish-green emerald leaves glittered in the breeze. Seeing such colour after a long monochromatic winter was incredible.
Then I heard the usual battle at the airport. Propane cannons, scare pistols, noisemakers and maybe the occasional gun — a chorus of pops, wumps and bangs. Either we were being invaded with a strong counterattack, or they were trying to scare away the birds. I say trying because the birds are smart and soon ignore human hysterics.
Many people don’t realize that every summer the birds and the airport have a pseudo war. In that area of the city, there are far more birds, particularly ravens, magpies and several species of gulls than you will find outside of the capital area. Those birds are a threat to aircraft landing or taking off, so they try, not very successfully, to scare them away.
The city, birds and the garbage dump have a long history that should be remembered. At one point, some city councillors wanted to turn Bristol Pit — a wonderful natural and geological site — into a garbage dump. Garbage would go to the dump, get compacted and then the bales trucked to Bristol Pit and piled up there.
What could possibly go wrong trucking bales of garbage down the highway? I pointed out that attracting and feeding a bunch of birds that are close to the airport might not be a good idea and filling the Bristol Pit with garbage would be a geological crime.
In 2009, city council was once again wrestling with the garbage, airport and bird problems. Council was considering passing a bylaw that would allow them to organize a cull of birds at the dump. They called it a cull and estimated that 1,000 or more birds, mostly gulls and ravens, would be eliminated. I don’t think they were prepared for the public backlash. It sounded more like a massacre of our beloved ravens and gulls. Can you imagine 10 or 20 people at the dump blasting away at the birds with shotguns until there were no birds left? It would have made the national news, no doubt.
They immediately backed off and paid a bunch of money to a consultant for a report. Governments love consultants because they then get a report that they can follow and if anything goes wrong, they can blame the consultant. The report said that they should shoot 20 gulls and two ravens every week. Instead, they went for propane cannons and even installed a couple at the dump. Those cannons would certainly startle salvagers when they went off but like the birds, they soon learned to ignore them.
Airports around the world have a problem with birds and putting a garbage dump close to one creates even more problems. Climb to the top of our dump and you can plainly see the city and the airport. We have well-paid city planners who plan these things.
I suggest we get some drones that look like birds of prey with blood curdling calls of attack and armed with water pistols full of something birds hate and then rent them out for kids to play with like a computer game and call it the defenders of the airport.
It is amazing the things you think about as you sit in the sun on a crazy, lazy, hazy summer’s day, as you are being serenaded by the mating birds, with propane cannons setting the beat. Wump! Pop! Bang!
