What would you do if a bird picked you up?

Timsup2nothin said:
The irony that this bit of speculation regarding the future evolutionary path of the tortoise takes place in a world which in fact rides upon the back of a gigantic spacecrawling tortoise should not be overlooked. The eagle that thinks so highly of itself is actually vastly outmatched.
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What a great point, I forgot about the space-faring turtle :)
A handy bit of self-referencing.

In other news, I was so smitten with Terry Pratchett's writing style that I adopted his three dots ... and got reamed by my English teachers for improperly using ellipses. :cry:
It is supposed to be used for missing words in a sentence, not a pause in reading speed.
http://www.getitwriteonline.com/archive/101805ellipses.htm
 
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:lol: anyone who thinks large harriers are all control has never observed nesting birds interact with one.
 
Perfection said:
Leave a bad Lyft review
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This seems unfair. If the ride is safe and comfortable and the bird gets you where you are going in reasonable time hasn't it earned as good a review as any other driver would get? Avianist.
 
I've thought of a different strategy. Maybe I'd hold myself all stiff and rigid, and the bird would start thinking he'd picked me up as a twig for his nest rather than as prey.
 
Timsup2nothin said:
This seems unfair. If the ride is safe and comfortable and the bird gets you where you are going in reasonable time hasn't it earned as good a review as any other driver would get? Avianist.
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I was expecting an AMC Eagle, not this.
 
MaryKB said:
My friend asked a bunch of us this question, and we ended up having a very interesting discussion as several of us had very different reactions. Just for fun.

Imagine you're out walking or something on a warm summer's day, and suddenly out of nowhere you're lifted into the air by a giant bird that swooped down and grabbed you, and now you're off flying.

How do you feel you'll react? Do you wait and see where you're taken, or do you try to struggle and make it let you go?
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If it lets you go, you die, unless you're lucky to land on some hay.

I don't have that sort of luck, so I'll hold on until it takes me to its nest. Then once it flies away I'll fight with the baby birds and knock them all out. Then once it's quiet I'll use my cellphone to call for help, assuming there is no easy way to get down.
 
What kind of bird can pick up a 200lb+ man? If any real bird tried to pick me up I'd probably flail my arms about wildly at it until it realized I was too heavy/too much trouble.

If said mythical bird exists, I'd imagine it would be a bird of prey of some sort with very sharp talons so it could get a good grip. If so it would be a very uncomfortable ride, I would be incapacitated from the pain/fright, and I would be at the mercy of the bird without much recourse. Kind of a poetic justice for all the chickens I've eaten in my life.
 
BenitoChavez said:
What kind of bird can pick up a 200lb+ man? If any real bird tried to pick me up I'd probably flail my arms about wildly at it until it realized I was too heavy/too much trouble.

If said mythical bird exists, I'd imagine it would be a bird of prey of some sort with very sharp talons so it could get a good grip. If so it would be a very uncomfortable ride, I would be incapacitated from the pain/fright, and I would be at the mercy of the bird without much recourse. Kind of a poetic justice for all the chickens I've eaten in my life.
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Make it a giant chicken. Vengeance for its fallen brethren.

Funnily enough, if said giant chicken attacked me, it wouldn't even be the first time a giant cock ruined my life....
 
Kaitzilla said:
What a great point, I forgot about the space-faring turtle :)
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Maturin?

Your responses are all very interesting, I feel it's fascinating how so many expect something horrible to happen to you, and even plan violence against this bird.
 
Well, if you describe it as "bird of size" without an additional qualifier, such as Roc fantasy descriptor of bird that indicates it would act differently than "bird that swoops and picks up things smaller than it," then it is pretty reasonable to expect to die imminently and violently. Violence is a lowest common denominator action, so any counteraction other than violence is meaningless, and often still meaningless assuming unequal ability to dispense it. Smaller things survive violence by bigger things through preparation, not guts.
 
Barely related anecdote:

Spoiler :
At some point during the last few years of my mom's life it came into her head that she wanted to go out to see the wildflowers. So, I loaded her in the car, along with my son who was tasked with living with her at the time and her little moppet dog, and off we went. We went to the poppy preserve, which was okay, but the flowers didn't really spread very close to the road so they weren't as accessible for her as I had hoped. Son at this point was dispatched along with the dog to go take pictures. Well, he was assigned to take the pictures, the dog was just supposed to be in the pictures. I had a good talk with my mom in the car, which was my usual function along with driving. She was a bit disappointed about not being closer to the flowers, but when the crew returned she enjoyed the pictures on son's phone.

I took a bit of meandering path on the way home, hoping, and was rewarded by finding a place I could pull just off the paved street onto a well maintained track and be right among the flowers. So, more pictures for them, more talking with mom for me, all is well. Flowers are right outside her window, on the slope of a low but fairly steep ridge.

We're sitting there, enjoying each others company, the flowers, the blue sky. Then this hawk shows up, gliding as hawks do. It settles on the updraft off our little ridge and it's just awesome. I've done a lot of hiking and seen a lot of soaring hawks, but this guy is closer than any I had ever seen, and for mom this is a once in a lifetime thing. It's not more than twenty feet above the ridge, which is barely taller than the car, and no more than thirty feet away, perfectly framed in the windshield. Just hanging in the air. Magnificent.

It crosses my mind to hope the kid sees it and gets pictures, since I think that he went that direction. Of course, he'll be looking down at the flowers so probably won't. No way to get his attention without scaring the hawk off though, at least that I can come up with on the spot.

That's when it occurs to me WHY this hawk is on such display, and I hop out of the car and scare it off. Thankfully before it worked out how to slip past my son and get my mom's dog.
 
Timsup2nothin said:
Barely related anecdote:

Spoiler :
At some point during the last few years of my mom's life it came into her head that she wanted to go out to see the wildflowers. So, I loaded her in the car, along with my son who was tasked with living with her at the time and her little moppet dog, and off we went. We went to the poppy preserve, which was okay, but the flowers didn't really spread very close to the road so they weren't as accessible for her as I had hoped. Son at this point was dispatched along with the dog to go take pictures. Well, he was assigned to take the pictures, the dog was just supposed to be in the pictures. I had a good talk with my mom in the car, which was my usual function along with driving. She was a bit disappointed about not being closer to the flowers, but when the crew returned she enjoyed the pictures on son's phone.

I took a bit of meandering path on the way home, hoping, and was rewarded by finding a place I could pull just off the paved street onto a well maintained track and be right among the flowers. So, more pictures for them, more talking with mom for me, all is well. Flowers are right outside her window, on the slope of a low but fairly steep ridge.

We're sitting there, enjoying each others company, the flowers, the blue sky. Then this hawk shows up, gliding as hawks do. It settles on the updraft off our little ridge and it's just awesome. I've done a lot of hiking and seen a lot of soaring hawks, but this guy is closer than any I had ever seen, and for mom this is a once in a lifetime thing. It's not more than twenty feet above the ridge, which is barely taller than the car, and no more than thirty feet away, perfectly framed in the windshield. Just hanging in the air. Magnificent.

It crosses my mind to hope the kid sees it and gets pictures, since I think that he went that direction. Of course, he'll be looking down at the flowers so probably won't. No way to get his attention without scaring the hawk off though, at least that I can come up with on the spot.

That's when it occurs to me WHY this hawk is on such display, and I hop out of the car and scare it off. Thankfully before it worked out how to slip past my son and get my mom's dog.
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My ex decided to get pet mice for my daughter, against my wishes. She then decided the mice smelt bad - well, duh - and put them on the balcony in their cage. Again, this is against my wishes, because while I didn't want the mice, once we had them they should have been properly cared for.

We live in a country that has butcher birds. These birds stab mice to death to eat them. My idiot wife is sitting out on the balcony, on the phone to me while I'm at work, talking about this pretty bird watching the mice.

"What kind of bird is it? Are you sure it's not trying to eat the mice?"

"No, it's too small. It's just curious."

"Send me a pic of it."

She sends me a pic. I instantly recognise this as a butcher bird, because I have actually seen a few nature documentaries in my life. I tell her to bring the mice inside immediately. By this point, she has left the mice alone on the balcony to go to the bathroom. By the time she went to rescue the mice, all three had died of heart attacks huddling in fear in the centre of the cage to escape the killer bird attempting to murder them.

God that woman was stupid. Like, Chris Pratt in Parks and Recs levels of stupid.
 
HoloDoc said:
My ex decided to get pet mice for my daughter, against my wishes. She then decided the mice smelt bad - well, duh - and put them on the balcony in their cage. Again, this is against my wishes, because while I didn't want the mice, once we had them they should have been properly cared for.

We live in a country that has butcher birds. These birds stab mice to death to eat them. My idiot wife is sitting out on the balcony, on the phone to me while I'm at work, talking about this pretty bird watching the mice.

"What kind of bird is it? Are you sure it's not trying to eat the mice?"

"No, it's too small. It's just curious."

"Send me a pic of it."

She sends me a pic. I instantly recognise this as a butcher bird, because I have actually seen a few nature documentaries in my life. I tell her to bring the mice inside immediately. By this point, she has left the mice alone on the balcony to go to the bathroom. By the time she went to rescue the mice, all three had died of heart attacks huddling in fear in the centre of the cage to escape the killer bird attempting to murder them.

God that woman was stupid. Like, Chris Pratt in Parks and Recs levels of stupid.
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At primary school we also had every week one hour for learning the basics for making things out of clay, wood, etc.
My first real project was a bird feeding house to be placed at the bannister of our second floor bacony in a residential area full of houses and not much green.
Painted green and red with a roof ofc.
I thought the roof was to protect the cereals against the rain.
Until I threw some excess food down at the greenfield of the public garden for birds too shy to come on my bird feeding house.
Looking down how they were eating I suddenly saw a blur falling down, which turned out to be a kestrel... grabbing a bird and flying away.
Roofs on bird feeding houses are not against rain.
 
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