Big Fat Crows

The Great Plotnik was heading down 26th of October Street on his Plotkicycle when he spied two enormous crows squawking from the top of a tall cypress tree. Lately there has been some neighborhood flak about certain people disliking crows because they consider these birds to be predators, but Plotnik thinks that's silly. They're birds, that's all. They're big, they do eat everything they can get their beaks into but they have plenty of problems of their own, including lyme disease that is destroying many of their colonies.

Plotnik likes crows the way he likes blue jays. Their biggest p.r. problem is they can't sing like a sparrow or a mockingbird. However, Plotnik has to admit that to a baby sparrow in the nest, a couple of rapidly approaching huge crows must be a recurring nightmare.

When Plottie got down to the bottom of the hill and turned onto Le Champs de Thirtieth Street, he was shaken to his boots by an enormous roar in the sky. Jumping off his bike and staring up into the sky, he saw two Navy F-4 Blue Angels tear across the very tops of the trees -- so close he could see the twin exhaust from each plane and feel the concussion as they turned hard left to head back towards the Bay.

Every year these planes come to Saint Plotniko in October, and every year Ducknik says the same thing about them: "I hate the military-industrial complex, but those planes and pilots amaze me."

Plotnik feels the same way -- the pilots are true artists who take their lives in their hands with no tolerance for error -- but he can't ever forget, as he sees how fast a jet fighter can cover this entire small city, how those two predators would have to appear to an Asian or an Afghan villager, trying to keep her babies safe in their beds from an enemy moving so fast they can barely be comprehended. And maybe there are not two but twenty two of them, and they've got 500 pound bombs under each wing, and the pilots have been taught that anyone in the sand below is presumed guilty. Anything that moves is the enemy.

Like the crows, the planes have to eat too. Give them bombs and they will drop them.

So as far as Plotnik is concerned, he'd rather never see a Blue Angel again, except on TV or at an IMAX theater. It is true that if he needs the Navy to protect him in the future, he'll be proud and thankful to know these pilots are trained and ready to go. But, please. Not in peace time. Not over our city. Not every year. We know you are bad ass. Enough, already.