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Sunday, December 14, 2014

Bird Mystery Solved

My investigator skills may be a little rusty since I hung them up when I retired three plus years ago, but I thought I’d drag them out and see if I could find out more about that mysterious upside down hanging bird Marti and I saw the other day.

It turned out to be a simple explanation, and I even found out who did the hanging!  Maybe my investigator skills aren’t as rusty as I thought…

I went and talked to Ranger Ken, who is the staff biologist here at the COE.  He laughed when I told him what we had seen.  He knew all about it because he was the person that hung the bird up in the first place.  In fact, he told me he had hung several others around the COE property and by the Thurmond Dam, too.

There has been recently a bunch of Turkey Vultures that have be causing some problems around the COE property.

                  Vulture

The vultures seem to have acquired a taste for roofing shingles, rubber roof coatings at the dam and automobile weather stripping.  Evidently there is something in the rubber that the vultures love to eat and they have caused quite a bit of damage to those items.  By hanging the imitation vulture upside down, it actually scares the real birds away preventing further damage.  Amazing!

It seems to work very well, so I’m going to see if I can find a Murphy doll, hang it upside down near my RV and scare that annoying Murphy away from causing things to break and malfunction on our Journey.  Brilliant, eh?  :c)

Thanks for visiting and feel free to leave a comment.

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10 comments:

  1. Thanks for the explanation, and maybe you could mass produce that Murphy doll. lol...

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  2. Good idea! Never know when that Murphy doll could come in handy :)

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  3. I see that you've changed what you wanted to hang from that tree but I'm guessing "Murphy" will do too. :)))

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  4. I can't believe that works. I've tried leaving dead flies as a warning to other ones and it never works!

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  5. This is your road to riches! Get a patent quick and let me know where I can order one.

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  6. I too would like to preorder a Murphy Doll. :)

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  7. Murphy doll??? I'll bet you could get the workers at Amazon to fulfill those orders! :)

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  8. Let us know how that Murphy Doll works...you guys can manufacture them and we will sell them on the road...that is once we buy one for ourselves! Sounds like a perfect company for those of us on the road who always have visits from Murphy over and over again! Remember the pet rock? Uhhuh...got your attention now don't we?

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