Thousands Of Grackles Are Massing In Anticipation Of The Upcoming Super Bowl

In the picture you are seeing just a few of the Grackles that have taken up residence at my neighborhood Wal-Mart Supercenter and Sam's Club.

Hundreds, maybe thousands, of the birds, all over the buildings, on vehicles. And standing all over the parking lot.

The Grackles have been hanging out in this location for weeks now. They seem to be getting very comfortable with their surroundings and are not as easily startled as they were a few weeks ago.

If you've ever watched The Birds, the whole scene is very Hitchcockian.

I read this morning. Or was it yesterday? That an attempt is being made to move the Grackles from their various locations, due to some people thinking this is yet one more local embarrassment in need of being hidden from the upcoming Super Bowl.

This particular Grackle infested Wal-Mart is just a few miles to the west of the Dallas Cowboy Stadium where the Super Bowl will take place. You can see the Cowboy Stadium from this location.

Across the street from the Cowboy Stadium is one of the nicest Wal-Marts I've ever seen. With the Grackles being such Wal-Mart fans I wonder if they have taken over that Wal-Mart yet? Or, are they waiting for the Super Bowl to make their move? They seem to be very smart birds. Smart birds are not Jerry Jones fans.

Maybe the Grackles are planning to fly into the stadium, en masse, through the open end zone doors. That would be poetic.

Efforts to move the Grackles have proven to be fairly futile in the past. Methinks the locals should embrace their Grackle Colonies and turn them into yet one more tourist attraction for the visiting football fans.

I'm having a bad reaction to the efforts to spruce up this place because of the Super Bowl.

I have known a slob or two who only cleans up their clutter on the rare occasions that company is expected.

That is how this local Super Bowl cleanup strikes me.

Really embarrassing.

A sloppy place picking up its clutter because company is arriving in town.

Shouldn't the litter be picked up all the time?

And I think I've already mentioned that there is no way to control where the Super Bowl visitors might be driving.

Rather than take I-30 into Fort Worth or Dallas, they might choose Division or Lancaster.

Division goes through some real eye-popping scenery in Dallas, while Fort Worth tops Dallas with Lancaster, Berry and Rosedale.

What if a visitor gets lost in the Fort Worth Stockyards zone and meanders around the neighborhood to the west? That won't leave a good impression.

Speaking of the Stockyards. Is the New Isis Theater being spruced up for the Super Bowl? It has been boarded up since I first laid eyes on it over 11 years ago. It is in the Fort Worth Stockyards National Historic District. I've been told a number of times that the New Isis is in the process of being restored.

But, unless it has been fixed up, without me knowing about it, the New Isis is still an Old Eyesore, that would be really easy to at least make look better from the outside.

Switching the subject back to the Texas Grackle Invasion. The Wikipedia article about these birds was amusing. And has a Texas connection.

From Wikipedia.....

Unlike many birds, the grackle benefits from the expansion of human populations due to its resourceful and opportunistic nature. The common grackle population has greatly increased in the Austin, Texas, area in recent years and is regarded as nuisance by some, due to aggressive behavior. Common grackles are considered a serious threat to crops by some, and notoriously difficult to exterminate and usually require the use of hawks or similar large birds of prey.

With just a few word changes the above paragraph could be an accurate description of Chesapeake Energy and its fellow gas drillers.

The Return Of The Short Shadow Of The Tandy Hills Thin Man Thinking About Litter Chain Gangs

I was on the Tandy Hills shortly after noon today. The sun was fully exposed with no clouds impeding its brightness.

Which made for a very bright, very short shadow.

I saw some of the results of Saturday's Brush Bash today. Along the main trail from View Street the view to the west is now much more viewable.

On the way to the Tandy Hills I saw a highway crew on Interstate 30 picking up bags of litter.

Yesterday I mentioned seeing what I thought to be a Litter Chain Gang picking up litter on the other side of the freeway from where I saw litter being removed today.

I got a few comments and emails about the subject. The Envy of the Entire Universe thought these litter pickers might have been something called Super Clean 2011 Volunteers, cleaning up for the Super Bowl.

More than one person was of the opinion this was being done for the Super Bowl.

Trouble with that theory is the Super Bowl takes place about 2 weeks from now. That is plenty of time to freshly coat the sides of the freeway with litter. Texans are astonishingly adept at littering.

I am also fairly certain that those guys in green, that I saw on Sunday, were not part of any volunteer group. First off the bus that transported them to the location was the same type prison bus I've seen transport Litter Gangs to pick up litter along the Trinity River's banks.

And, yesterday there was more than one man acting like a guard, watching the Litter Gang slowly pick up litter.

Anonymous, if that is her or his real name, told me that inmates are used to pick up litter in Washington. I've never seen this happen. But, I do know one convicted Washington felon who would greatly benefit, exercise-wise, if she were made to spend weekends picking up litter.

On a totally different subject, yesterday, or the day before, Betty Jo Bouvier mentioned a goofy thing regarding her town of Sedro Woolley, that being that a Washington radio station was having a contest called "Are You Smarter Than Sedro Woolley?"

Naturally, some Sedro Woollians are taking umbrage. Meanwhile down in Portland, that's the biggest town in Oregon, Some Portlanders are taking a little umbrage at a TV show called Portlandia on some obscure cable channel called the Independent Film Channel.

You can read more about being smarter than Sedro Woolley and Portlandia on my Washington Blog, and watch an amusing video of Portlandia.

How come no one makes a funny comedy TV show using Fort Worth for material? It would seem this town would be a gold mine of comic material. Trinity River Vision, Moron Mayor Mike Moncrief, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Lancaster Avenue, the Stockyards, Shanty Towns, thousands of natural gas wells, the Stock Show, Sundance Square, TCU.

And all the other marvelous wonders that make Fort Worth the Envy of the Nation....

Looking At The Litter In Two Flooding Rivers With One In Texas & One In Washington

Above you are looking at a railroad bridge across the flooding Skagit River, from the Mount Vernon south side of the river, a couple miles from my Washington abode. This picture was taken yesterday.

A log jam has built up against the bridge that has caused some concerns. Bridges in Washington have often been badly damaged by log jams.

The Skagit River is a bigger river than the Trinity River, which is my current neighborhood river. The rivers styles of flooding are quite different. Note how clean the Skagit River water looks. Do you see any litter besides those vexing logs?

I have been looking at a lot of pictures of the current flood event on the rivers of Western Washington. I have not seen any litter floating in the flooded rivers. Not in any pictures or video. I am sure there is some litter floating in the current flood, there would have to be.

But not in the astonishingly copious amounts I have witnessed in the Trinity River.

Above is a picture of the Trinity River during its most recent flood. The picture was taken from the south side of the river, at Quanah Parker Park, about the same distance from my current abode as the first picture, above, was from my Washington abode.

Do you notice any differences? To my eyes the Skagit River appears to be clear, clean water, while the Trinity River looks to be rather dirty, with litter floating in it.

I have boated on the Skagit River, long floats on my rubber raft. I've eaten fish caught in the Skagit River. I have inner tubed the Skagit River. These are things I can not say I have done in the Trinity River. Though inner tubing in the Trinity has become a bit of a fad among life-risking daredevils.

Below is a video of the most recent flood event of the Trinity River. In the video you will see a lot of litter float by. Ironically, this flood occurred a short time after the more dire flood that was caused by the remnants of Hurricane Hermine. One would have thought the supply of Texas litter would have been a bit in short supply for a flood following so quickly after the biggest flood I've seen since I've been in Texas, but one would have been wrong, the supply of litter had been re-stocked, totally ready for the next flood event.

Texans seem to pride themselves on being World Class Litterers. We  like World Class stuff here. Soon we will have the World's Premiere Wake Boarding facility. Where people can come from all over the world to enjoy the fragrant waters of the Trinity River....