It wasn’t straight out of a script by Alfred Hitchcock, but a local Chatham resident had an experience that was for the birds recently.
Well, actually, it was by the birds; crows in particular.
Alysson Storey took to social media to describe the encounter in tongue-in-cheek detail, a synopsis of which appears as a letter to the editor in this week’s Chatham Voice.
Storey said she took her Aunt Marian out for a nice meal and then a concert downtown, and the crows delivered a disgusting end to an otherwise enjoyable evening.
She found a great place to park, kicking the night off in fine form.
“In Chatham, you always get so excited when you get that perfect parking spot,” she said.
The spot may have been awesome in terms of location relative to the restaurant and the performance hall, but it came with a catch – it was under a tree in downtown Chatham in the middle of winter.
When Storey and her aunt returned to the vehicle four hours later, they found it covered in crow crap.
“It was quite something. I’d never seen anything quite like it before,” Storey said of the filth covering her Honda Civic. “It’s not an experience I’d care to repeat.”
Just walking up to the vehicle was no easy task, as the crows had liberally coated the sidewalk with their poop as well.
Despite taking her Civic through a car wash that night, some damage had already been done by the corrosive crow droppings. Storey said some of the layers of paint on the roof of the car had been destroyed.
“I don’t know what they’re eating, but it’s something that did not react well to the finish of my car,” she said. “It’s not the end of the world by any stretch, but it’s an annoyance. It permanently damaged my property.”
While the crow bombing of her vehicle disgusted her, she is not one to advocate having a cull and blasting the birds out of the sky.
“I really enjoy nature. We have a lot of it in Chatham-Kent. I don’t have anything against crows,” she said. “But I’m not sure what can be done about the crows. If there are non-lethal ways to encourage them to move on, great, but if you are just moving them around town, that’s not really helping anything.”
Taking away the crow perches would be another way to force the birds to move on, but it too is something Storey doesn’t want to see happen.
“The trees downtown, I’ve always really enjoyed them, especially in the warmer months,” she said.
In the future, Storey said she would continue to frequent downtown businesses and enjoy dinners in the heart of Chatham, as well as nights out. But she will look up before parking.
“There are lots of other spots in the same area that aren’t under trees. I will use them when I go downtown,” she said.
She urged other residents to enjoy what Chatham’s downtown has to offer as well, but suggested they too not park underneath the trees at night in the middle of winter. And if they do suffer from a bombing by the “Crow Luftwaffe” as she called it in her social media rant, head to the car wash immediately to try to prevent permanent damage to their paint.
“When you come out of having supper, or seeing the show, or doing some shopping, you may have a nasty surprise,” she said. “I urge other folks who get bird poo on their vehicle to remove it tout de suit.”
She also reminded everyone there is a light at the end of the crow-poop-coated tunnel – spring is just around the corner, and the crows will soon move back into the countryside and beyond.
