Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

38 / Annie Dillardas many birds do, starlings roost all together in vast hordes anddroves. They have favorite roosting sites to which they returnwinter after winter; apparently southwest Virginia is their ideaof Miami Beach. In Waynesboro, where the starlings roost in thewoods near the Coyner Springs area, residents can’t go outsidefor any length of time, or even just to hang laundry, because ofthe stink—“will knock you over”—the droppings, and the lice.Starlings are notoriously difficult to “control.” The story is toldof a man who was bothered by starlings roosting in a large sycamorenear his house. He said he tried everything to get rid ofthem and finally took a shotgun to three of them and killed them.When asked if that discouraged the birds, he reflected a minute,leaned forward, and said confidentially, “Those three it did.”Radford, Virginia, had a little stink of its own a few years ago.Radford had starlings the way a horse has flies, and in similarlyunapproachable spots. Wildlife biologists estimated the Radfordfigure at one hundred fifty thousand starlings. The people complainedof the noise, the stench, the inevitable whitewash effect,and the possibility of an epidemic of an exotic, dust-borne virusdisease. Finally, in January, 1972, various officials and biologistsgot together and decided that something needed to be done. Afterstudying the feasibility of various methods, they decided to killthe starlings with foam. The idea was to shoot a special detergentfoam through hoses at the roosting starlings on a night whenweathermen predicted a sudden drop in temperature. The foamwould penetrate the birds’ waterproof feathers and soak theirskins. Then when the temperature dropped, the birds would droptoo, having quietly died of exposure.Meanwhile, before anything actually happened, the paperswere having a field day. Every crazy up and down every mountainhad his shrill say. The local bird societies screamed forblood—the