TAKING BACK AMERICA

[blackjedii]

Dirty Birds
What it’s like to live with a national symbolDutch Harbor is a small town on a small island far out in Alaska’s Aleutian chain, nearly 1,200 miles from Anchorage at the edge of the Bering Sea. It’s the most productive fishing port in the United States. Every winter the tiny population swells with thousands of people who come to work in

Comments

[hikerpoet]

Haha...I'm a nature educator at a state park, and we talk about this type of thing all the time. We don't have *that* many on the New England coast, but they've revived, and relatively common now. Overall, we're glad, but they can indeed be dumb assholes. I've heard that really was part of Ben Franklin's point with his turkey rec.
Those predator birds can be sneaky! When I was growing up a baby chihuahua was carted off by an owl, and it is not rare for one of our hike leaders to say, "Damn, it just absconded with my favorite rare warbler, I am NOT happy!"

[kyouichi]

Ha! Wild turkeys can be giant assholes, too, though. We have random flocks of turkeys roaming around our neighborhoods, and there was this one pair that decided to settle in our court. The male attacked and chased every running car in our court for a week, and I saw him chase our mail carrier away. What finally got rid of them was my brother visiting with his dog, and that dog perked right up at the sight of those turkeys and gave chase to play. But the turkeys apparently decided that while cars were no big, a friendly yippy dog was too much and finally left our court.

[honorh]

I come from Alaska, and I can attest to the fact that bald eagles are 1. magnificent creatures, and 2. dangerous as hell. They're huge. They're excellent hunters and scavengers. Owning a small dog in bald eagle country is not a bright choice; eagles will see your chihuahua as prey. So, I loved this article.