By Rebecca Fiedler
So God created all the creatures of the Earth and gave them to Adam to rule over, and God saw that it was good. On the seventh day God rested.
If you’ll look closely at your Bible, pay attention to the asterisk at the end of Genesis Chapter 1 that notes how while God was sleeping, Alfred Hitchcock created grackles and sent them to Waco, telling them they didn’t have to answer to anyone so long as they always stayed together in large groups, sacrificed one of the flock to be entrapped inside a grocery store once a week, pooped on sidewalks and screamed like a coronet player choking on a Fruit Rollup.
I don’t know what the black, shiny and disgusting birds known as grackles did to romance Uncle Sam, but killing grackles is a federal crime, and they swarm into Waco every fall in seemingly infinite droves.
They harass other birds local to the area. They carry disease. They entrench the city in the ranch dressing of their defecation. I’m pretty sure that we all want them gone somehow.
There are options available to rid us of grackles other than hunting, such as making loud predatory noises or using scarecrows, but let’s be honest with ourselves; grackles are too impertinent to be gently coaxed away.
If we can’t hunt them, then I suggest taking some of the following measures to kick the rumps of the winged monkeys that rule Waco:
1) Erect a large statue of a pigeon and pray to it. The grackles will think themselves a persecuted religious minority and fly to Washington, D.C. to seek justice through the court system, where they will spend two years waiting to get their case heard.
2) Begin using grackle feathers as a currency, and use that money to buy stale bread to throw to the Brazos River ducks, adding insult to injury.
3) Treat grackles like the Pokemon known as Pidgey, catching them and cramming them into small plastic balls and giving them the least attention of all animals in our possession, only taking them out to sacrifice in battle so that our favored pets can fight a slightly more weakened enemy.
4) Carry Macaw parrots on our shoulders and make the grackles feel self-conscious about their looks.
5) Treat them with passive aggression. Give them backhanded compliments such as “Oh, that bath you just took in the gutter water almost washed away the dirt that covers up the bald patch under your left wing. Glad it’s all OK.”
Grackles have been allowed to rule us as jerks of the air for far too long.
It’s time to protect our red cardinals and our finches and robins the only practical and effective way the government will allow: bullying the crap out of grackles.
Rebecca Fiedler is a junior journalism major from Waco. She is a staff writer for the Lariat.
