Okay, so let's be honest here. The move from beautiful North Carolina to cruddy, muggy Houston (no matter how much nature is scattered here and there, you Houstonians know it's not the same thing) has been bumpy. The lack of what I consider to be true nature is one such bump. So, imagine my delight when, upon sitting at a red light at the busy corner of Kirby and Westpark, I heard a ton of racket. What the fuck is this shit? I rolled down my window and turned off the radio. Guess what it was. A bird. And not just one bird. A shitload of birds. All singing like crazy. I wanted to jump out of my car and sit beneath the tree and just focus on the singing and not the traffic whizzing by.
As the months went by, I continued to enjoy these birds whenever I was in the area. It seems that they all gather along the telephone poles
en masse around dusk; enough so that they actually weigh down the lines as they serenade the 5 o'clock traffic commuters stuck at the light. And if this bird is not to be found on a telephone pole, then it and its buddies can all surely be found in a nearby tree. Hundreds of them in the same tree, literally. I hesitate to tell you this, but you can also find them in the parking lot of the local grocery store or anywhere else there is city garbage, hanging around with their mouth perpetually wide open as if waiting for something to fall from the sky. I try to overlook the trashy side of this bird, this one single bird that seems to exist in Houston.
What is the name of this bird, you ask? Well my friends, it is the
Grackle.
Yes, I love grackles. I know it. You hate them. I read all about you online. You are not unique. Seems that everyone hates grackles because they are nasty city birds who thrive on refuse. They shit everywhere. Their songs drive people nuts. To me, this noise emitted from my lovely bird reminds me more of my childhood guinea pig who would make the same sound whenever he thought I was going to get him some lettuce. Sort of like a high-pitched "REET! REET!" Okay, so maybe not a song, but whatever. According to a
news piece I read, in Dallas-Ft. Worth, they let people shoot off cannons and firecrackers and lasers and whatever in an attempt to get rid of these things. Now they're bringing in grackle-eating hawks. Okay, so maybe I'm desperate here. But anyway... ask anyone in town about the grackle and they'll tell you that this black, oily bird is by far the most odious.
I guess I must be desperate. And this, after being here for less than a year!
But let me change your mind about the grackle with this story. Recently, Carlos and I were going to this pub for lunch. As we were walking in, I noticed there were packages of Sweet'n'Low all over the place, as well as piles of white power. I summed it up to a lazy staff. As it was relatively nice outside, we decided to sit at one of the tables. We sit down and start chatting when all of the sudden I see out of the corner of my eye a grackle fly down to the sidewalk, maybe 5 feet away. And what does this grackle proceed to do? It starts eating on the Sweet'n'Low packet, pecking away at that nasty shit like it was real food or whatever. And not just the Sweet'n'Low. This guy was eating the Splenda, too. His girlfriend, equally ugly but brown, joined in. The waiter came out and I commented on the grackles. He starts bad-mouthing them, telling us that actually, the grackles are all over the place and they like to steal the Sweet'n'Low and Equal and carry them off, chew on them, and drop them into the nearby fountain, thus making a delicious sugary cocktail. I could hardly believe it. I walked over to the fountain and lo and behold, it was FULL of these little packets. Ha! I loved it. I thought it was fabulous! So I sit back down and we start eating. Then, you won't believe this, I got to see the grackle in action. He swooped down to the table next to us, picked out a couple of packets of sweetener out of the little sugar/sweetener box that are on most restaurant tables, and flew up to the tree above us. Which happens to be just above the fountain. And he starts eating. And dropping packets. No one else around us seemed to notice what had happened, it was like my own private grackle show.
The waiter came out later and took our plates away. I told him what happened and he said, "Oh yeah, that happens all the time. But did you notice he didn't take the sugar? They always leave the sugar."
City birds.
photo by
abcnews.
Chosen over the cotton boll and the cactus, the bluebonnet is Texas's state flower. Fittingly so, I might add, as this is a flower that only grows naturally in the Texas area, generally from March to May. "The name is from the shape of the petals of the flower and their resemblance to the bonnets worn by pioneer women to shield themselves from the sun." (Wikipedia). But get this, so while the bluebonnet is the official state flower, there are actually 5 state flowers, all of them bluebonnets. But not all of them are blue. You see, first one variety was chosen as the state flower. Then another, more widely-spread variety was nominated, and so as not to offend, it was said that all varieties of the bluebonnet would be the state flower. Only to find that there are 3 other varieties, and that if any other species came into existence, well, you said it, that too would be the state flower.
