Embracing luck wherever we find it
Several years ago, daily printing of the Dothan Eagle was moved off-site and our press operation was retired. That decision idled our production department, and four brick walls that shuddered several times a day throughout the decades from the vibrations of a series of massive presses got a well-deserved rest. An automated Rube Goldberg-esque array of conveyors, sorters, folders, inserters, and bundlers spanning a warehouse between the press room and the loading dock began to gather dust, and the daily procession of semis jockeying trailers into our narrow downtown loading dock ceased.
The eerie serenity didn't last long. A few days after I noticed the trucks were no longer arriving, I heard loud peeping in the loading dock. One of those sudden summer storms had begun without warning, and a small bird had taken refuge under the corrugated steel roof over the dock. It must've liked the neighborhood, because the bird soon returned, and brought his friends.
Soon there was a flock living in the rafters of the loading dock year-round. I can only identify a few birds by sight, and that particular breed wasn't in my bird-cabulary. All I can say is that they were loud, happy, active, and prolific producers of excrement. That's more than enough to keep me wary. I've had more than my share of experience with bird droppings.
I grew up in a neighborhood a few blocks from Rip Hewes Stadium, near Selma Street School and Trinity Lutheran kindergarten. We were close enough that we could hear the roar of the fans at football games, and enjoy marching band performances at halftime. During the day, if the wind was right, we'd smell fresh baked loaves coming out of the ovens at Colonial Bakery just east of the stadium on the other side of the railroad tracks. I remember those pleasant senses fondly.
Unfortunately, I also remember the onslaught of birds.
Before the city recreation department built a baseball diamond and tennis courts along the north side of the stadium parking lot, the area was a dense copse of trees. One year, a bunch of birds decided to congregate in those trees. There must have been a quarter-million or more that alighted in the lush, towering vegetation, turning once-green foliage a quivering black. The din from the avian apocalypse was deafening and relentless, and was soon accompanied by a nose-burning stench from copious droppings from a legion of chattering birds.
I don't know how they were finally convinced to leave, but the men I recall gathering at the tree line, peppering the boughs with shotgun blasts, seemed to have no success. I always imagined it was the olfactory memory of the invasion of those squawkers and their impressive proliferation of droppings that sealed the deal for the new ballfield, because it would require removal of most of the trees co-opted by the migrators.
Even now, I've not forgotten that stomach-flipping odor that permeated the neighborhood for days. It was so bad that we longed for what had previously been the worst smell ever — the aroma from the paper mill on the Chattahoochee River at Cedar Springs, the one that mill management likes to call "the smell of money."
It may well have scarred me, because my first experience as the unfortunate target of a well-aimed bird dropping caused me to overreact badly. We were in Helen, Georgia, where the Chattahoochee is nothing more than a stream, and as I stood there musing about the humble origin of the powerful river, I felt a thud on my back — bird poop! I thought I might die if I didn't have a shower immediately.
Another time I had run into my pals George Flowers and Jimbo Loftin on a downtown sidewalk. As we stood talking, a raindrop hit my forehead. Only it wasn't rain, and Jimbo and George absolutely lost it. I don't blame them.
The last time it happened, I was with a group of writers in New Delhi, India, talking with a man outside a mosque. I wore a white button-down shirt, taking notes as the man talked. I soon felt a sort of thump on my collarbone, and a bright yellow substance splattered across the page of my notepad. Activity in our little group ceased, and when I looked up, everyone was looking at me.
One would have thought I was E.F. Hutton, and had just spoken. Then the Indian man piped up. "That's good luck, sir!" Satisfied that he had defused the moment, he continued as if nothing happened.
Down the front of my white shirt was a mustard-yellow stain. I looked at the guy next to me and said, "These Indo-Gangetic birds must eat a lot of curry."
Until the end of our office's time on Oates Street, I tried to give the loading dock a wide berth, particularly when the birds are swarming, and it's become second nature to seek cover when the creatures take wing.
But if I need a bit of luck, I know where to find it.
Bill Perkins is editorial page editor of the Dothan Eagle and can be reached at or 334-712-7901. Support the work of Eagle journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at dothaneagle.com .
Editorial Page Editor
