Something about birds, however, that can bring out the worst in lifer, often in perople. Not for nothing did superstitious Romans consider consider birds as messengers, bringers of omens, auguring most often calamity although some positive portent was associated with a few types of birds.
Birds of a black feather rarely bring good news. Some are associated with superstition like ravens and crows - some have just turned out to have been bad to the bone.
Consider the case of Eugene Schieffelin, a man of many talents, but who left his mark on North America by attempting to introduce European birds to the New World. Called acclimatazisers, men like Schieffelin who longed to hear and see the birds of their European homelands - song thrushes, skylarks and nightingales, all foreign to these shores brought captive birds in numbers, mostly to New York, and released them to multiply naturally. Strange results were naturally bound to happen - what the technology writer Edward Tenner has called the revenge of unintended consequences; or why things bite back. Colonizing with people was one thing - importing alien species another tale entirely. Schieffelin introduced the common turdus vulgaris -the starling - to New York. In no time the starlings, known to be highly intelligent and renowned mimics (mynahs belong to the starling clan), -also highly prolific with two broods a season - took over the roosts, lofts and treetops of New York. Aggresive too, to boot, are our smart starlings, willing to attack their own some 10% of starlings die by the beak of another starling, being thus their own worst enemy. Much like man is willing to slay his own to gain or cement territory.
Starlings have, in the 112 years since old Eugene released his hundred pairs in New York, multiplied tremendously. They travel in flocks sometimes as large as 200,000 - a formation for travel that is an awesome sight - but this for flight purposes only: they congregate in the millions, have proven to be a major municipal pest in cities all over North America. In Toronto natural predators such as falcons have been imported to counteract the black, disease-spreading hordes.
Crows, like starlings, are suspectible to the West Nile Virus, spread by mosquitoes. Crows, however, do not have a starling’s resistance. An item in last week’s local news caught the attention of many. A deceased crow had been found in the Don Valley, and tested positive for the West Nile Virus. The corpse was found - it’s hard to resist the pun, minutes from the office of this paper, as the crow flies. Is there cause for worry here?
While the West Nile Virus is very rarely fatal when contracted by humans, most often resulting in flu-like sympotoms, it has found human victims. Birds have been known to spread disease before - to crops for example. A bird excreting blight ridden wheat chaff in a neigbouring county has led to crop failure there, the cycle only to continue.
Should humans be fearing for their lives, or is this yet another case of media malarkey? Zebra mussels, also imports through shipping ballast, were supposed to ruin the quality of our drinking water. Are they at fault, or is the Tory government, for cutting back on testing? And the list goes on. Concern piles on top of worry, turns into paranoia, which’ll destroia.
Nowhere is that concern more important than with foodstuffs - what we all eat as part of the foodchain. Now, no-one would dream of inviting people over for barbecued crow - but a porterhouse steak? Bring ‘er on.
The other startling bit of news last week about Ma Nature’s ways was the revelation that the mad cow has mooed, Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease has counted its first case of death in Canada. Others are known to have contracted the disease. The Saskatchewan case has been explained - it was the fault of technology, rather than a natural event such as eating the wrong food. An infected endoscope, a $25,000 instrument cannot be sterilized against the protein that carries the disease. Over 70 people have had an endoscopy with the instrument after it was used on Canada’s first fatality of mad cow.
No one is safe from any illness, and it is folly to expect immunity from all that floats around this world. Most people are aware of this. Therefore there really are no unintended consequences anywhere, the revenge pattern is all part of nature’s grand game of chess. Mankind has survived by learning each time it has been bitten, chalk up another lesson for man, another triumph, however unintended, for nature. Yup, another day for the birds.