Boot 'n Paddle - April 5, 2008

It’s late right now, this column is eight or so hours late, I have a drawing due tomorrow at 8:30 am that I haven’t started, my bad spot is itching like crazy, and all I can think about is how sick I am of Pileated woodpeckers, especially those on our campus.

            Here’s what I’m thinking about Pileated woodpeckers: First of all, are they paying tuition? That is, of course, a joke question, but they aren’t. They aren’t paying tuition. What do our tuition dollars go towards? Okay, fair. Sure they don’t go to class, nor do they eat is the dining hall. But guess what? A large portion of our payment goes towards maintenance, and residence. These freeloading mutts fly around our campus, living in our trees. Not only that, to live in these trees they have to peck out they trees’ insides (the trees’ soul). They do the same thing to eat. More holes! No, thanks. I would rather these turds eat at Dana than litter our lawns with wood chippings, ruining the trees in the process. We should work out a system where the peckers eat our scrap Dana food. I hope they don’t like Mac and Cheese triangles because of those I never have leftovers.

            Then there’s the principal of what they are doing. Imagine this scenario: Me. Out next to a tree completely naked (birds don’t wear any clothing), with an axe chopping away at a tree day after day. To me that sounds illegal. So why are these birds not being prosecuted?! I’ll tell you why, because the burden of proof is on the prosecution and no one has enough gumption to stand up to these savages!

            Here’s an idea… When I was younger my family had a fish tank full of brightly colored fish, and one day it and the fish were gone. My Dad told my brother and me that he put some in our pond and the brought the others to our town’s college for experiments. I thought this was really cool and my Dad said we could visit them in the laboratory anytime. We, St. Lawrence, just built a new science building that is huge and I’m sure somewhere in that building there is someone who thinks it might be fun to use the Pileated woodpeckers for experiments. And what do experiments do? They help people and birds. Couldn’t we just round up these creatures and bring them to the new science building for research and testing? Or we could just flush them down the toilet like my Dad actually did.