The Parable of the Birds

I have been working for a couple years at an energy conservation company, mostly because I am too much of a wuss to try bringing my writing career to the fore and make it the number one moneymaker. I sincerely love working where I do, even though it's a good 40 minute drive (eesh), for a couple reasons...first, the people are either completely awesome, adorably weird, both, or an interesting variety of insane, and secondly, they sell environmentalism in a way that works. I am very enthusiastic about the environment, go nature, etc., etc., but the basic truth of the environment is that the vast majority of people in the world care a whole big lot about the environment...until they need to shell out for it. What my company does is to market energy conservation as primarily being about conserving what's in your BANK ACCOUNT, and being great for the environment as a side effect. That's the way to do it.

So anyway, the common sense approach to environmentalism in combination with the people who work there make for a really wonderful workplace environment, and I'm offering the Adventure of the Day up as an example.

The company is located in one of those corporate campus wonderlands out in the 'Boroughs, so there's a fair amount of wild life...deer, turkeys, any number of small critters like bunnies and squirrels, etc. There are also birds. Specifically, there is a family of starlings that has taken up residence in the area of an open gutter on the roof. Several folks near their area have been treated (read: subjected) to the babies' cheerful squawking for a few weeks now, and today they learned to fly.

...unfortunately, being birds, they weren't really bright enough to fly outwards toward freedom, and instead flew and/or careened into an interior wall.

So...what do you do now?

I think a lot of companies would call someone and just be like "get them out, do what you have to do," and the birds would wind up extracted or just fumigated to death or whatever, and that would be the end. Not here, my friends. No, instead, one of our field guys and a couple of the women in the office spent a good chunk of time carefully getting the birdies outside, which meant that as I went through my normal day, someone would walk past with a screaming baby starling.

What a great place.