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.
