Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 7, 1995 TAG: 9501110013
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
It's not higher taxes, crime, traffic concerns or any of the socio-political scourges that normally embattle municipalities and their leaders.
No, this is a more excremental matter.
It involves an unwanted population of squatters. A group looking for a place to call home, and stay warm, during the cold winter months. A flock of noisy transients lacking the social graces that we take for granted. They squawk amongst themselves, refuse to move, and darnit, they dirty up the place.
What we're talking about here is bird poop, plain and simple. A flock of doo-doo-dropping starlings has beset the town's main downtown thoroughfare.
Thousands of the little brown birds have decided to take roost upon the Bradford Pear trees lining Main Street between College Avenue and Roanoke Street. As a result, on any given morning, shoppers, diners and business owners walking the sidewalk find their feet crunching, even - ugh - squishing overtop the plentiful, tiny, grayish mounds that the starlings, um, pass to the ground.
As for the benches, well, just watch where you sit.
It's a concern that has not gone unnoticed.
"You betcha. It's been causing us a lot of heartache," said Kelly Mattingly, the town's director of public works. "It's really a bad situation."
This isn't the first year the birds have stunk up the downtown scene, but Mattingly said he's been told it seems worse than in the past. While his office has received only a few calls, there are plenty of complaints on the streets.
"We have a big problem right in front of our store," said Michelle McMurtrie, a receptionist at Big Al's Hair Salon. Just recently, a woman came into the salon angered because one of the feathered fiends had decided to relieve itself just as she walked under a tree. You get the picture. Employees at Arnold's and The Underground also said they've heard numerous complaints from customers.
For weeks on end, Mattingly has had his crew wash down the sidewalks and benches three days a week with high-powered sprayers.
But unfortunately, "[The birds are] still creating a terrible mess," he said. "It's not real fun."
A historical note: All this grief is being caused by a bird that, just over a century ago, didn't even exist on this continent. In 1892, Eugene Scheiffelin, a manufacturer, bird enthusiast and avid Shakespeare fan, came up with what he thought to be an ingenious plan: introduce every bird mentioned in the bard's writings to America.
Scheiffelin let loose a flock of starlings in New York City's Central Park.
Within 60 years, the starling's range extended continentwide; it had become known as a pest that bullied prettier, more preferred birds away, and it had established itself as prolific survivor immune to many of man's methods of combatting its annoying nature.
Nothing's changed these days.
Seems the birds take up roost as winter approaches, taking advantage of the leaves - the Bradford Pears keep their foliage longer than most trees - and the closed-in environment on Main Street, which deflects the wind and keeps the area a little warmer.
Simply put, "It's actually an ideal place for the birds to spend the winter," said Martin Lowney, state director of the animal damage control program for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Lowney characterized the problem more than anything as a nuisance, although admittedly, "You don't want to be setting your sandwich down on a park bench with bird droppings. That's probably a health hazard."
Lowney, who visited Blacksburg recently on other business, conferred with Mattingly on the feces-flaunting fowl, and gave him advice on ways to shoo them away.
"One is to harass them," Lowney said.
Lowney said the starling situation is a common one; he once helped Manassas rid itself of a half million of the offending-feathered ones. By comparison, Blacksburg's flock numbers a paltry 2,000 or so.
So coming soon, perhaps as early as next week: air horns, blasted for about 15 minutes at dusk for five or six consecutive days.
"If you do it right, it always works," Lowney said.
For Mattingly's crews, the measure, if it succeeds, will undoubtedly be a blessing. Spraying bird droppings off the streets isn't one of the public work crews' favorite duties, to say the least.
Even so, "It's our job," Mattingly said. "If we don't do it, no one else will do it."
by CNB