Living with Grackles - A Great Experience (Grackles at UT Austin)

by Poonammishra
(Patna ,Bihar, India)

A Purple Grackle

I was living in F K ALLEN, a dormitory, when I attended the University of Texas at Austin in the early 1990s. It was a very big dorm and had its own zip code.

An indigenous population of grackles were living right next door to F K ALLEN. Grackles are very large black or dark purple bird. They're smaller than hawks but larger than crows. They have sharp pointing beaks and tail feathers that are as long as the rest of their body. They wander throughout the city and gather into large flocks.

It seems that the entire population of grackles in Austin lived in nests in spruce trees near ALLEN dorm. Each night these birds use to squawk and chatter in a collective noise so loud that it was very difficult to even have a conversation.

But in the morning they would be gone, flying away to unknown parts.

It was a part of a campus so everyday at least twice the groundskeeper had to power wash the ground underneath those trees. There was usually a pungent and unpleasant smell in the air, too.

So many tricks and plans were undertaken but none of the plans did much to rid the campus of this feathered infestation.

One plan was that, before the arrival of the birds in the evening volunteers with shotguns lined up in V-shaped formation. The shotguns were fired into the air as the grackles arrived. The idea was that birds would be startled and fly away towards the open end of V.

This routine went on very long but the birds kept coming back - they literally shit all over the plans.

When I left the University of Texas in 1993, the grackles, almost mocking in their victory, were still there.

About 10 years later I returned to Austin for a visit. One of my objectives was to visit the place of my higher education.

Everything had changed. Where I used to go to sleep there was an auditorium and there were benches across the street and flower boxes which were nicely groomed but there was not a sound, sight, or scent of a grackle.

It was a total mystery for me. Did they poison them? Did they fly away to greener pastures? So the people of ALLEN finally got rid of the grackles.

After some time, though, I saw densely packed trees were there next to the hotel. I smelled that unmistakable smell again and saw their all-too-fresh scars of war on the ground. It was true - at sunset I was once again back home among the grackles, my archenemies.

Finally, the University of Texas had bestowed another gift to Austin. I'm sure that some city workers thanks them in ther own special way - every sunrise and sunset.