Friday, August 31, 2007

Nature observation

Sigh. I live in a nice neighbourhood. Really nice. It's urban, yet it has a nice small village quality. It was even voted the cosiest neighbourhood (or something like that) in Finland last year. But now, the ecosystem is threatened, because apparently, this bird has nested here. I'm not exactly sure what it is, because I'm not an ornithologist, but if I am not mistaken, it is a representative of a variety of owl or something. If I remember correctly from biology lessons in school, it's distinguishing characteristics are a particularly ugly, screeching voice, frightening appearance and awful lyrics. These characteristics are enough to categorize it as a nuisance, but in addition the parasites usually swarming in its presence are known to be completely tasteless and have a bad 90's style rock sound.

Lately, there have been alarmingly many sightings of the bird in the neighbourhood. I suspect that the nest might be in the attic of a nearby house, because I've been keeping on hearing weird yodeling noises during the summer. Not to mention some strange smells, which also might, probably, originate from the pest. If it's not wiped out as soon as possible, I can imagine it aspiring to appear in every community festivity. Besides the obvious noise detriment, its peasant followers would be sure to flock in and definitely ruin any celebration for us respectable people.

I'm living in the hope that the species is migratory and will spend the winter in some other country, hopefully thousands of kilometres away. The further the better, and let's hope that its sense of direction is not too good. With some luck, it will not be able to navigate back. And for humanity's sake, let's hope that it will get lost forever in some desolate corner of the world totally devoid of any recording equipment.