Green Buildings, Birds and Feral Cats

Sometimes a noble and good intentioned endeavor can go south.

It seems Emory University is experiencing an unwanted problem from an eco-friendly "green" building they constructed some years back. Migrating birds are fooled by the reflection of the large glass windows in the building and fly into them, full steam ahead, causing a quick end to their migration, not to mention their life. The building killed approximately 60 birds the first year, and was referred to as the "wall of death" and the "bird slaughterhouse" in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The university now drapes a large portion of the building in black mesh for three months a year during migration season; the birds bounce off the mesh and hopefully go in another direction. The article in the Atlanta Journal-Constition also quotes a bird expert who claims between 100 million and one billion birds die each year as a result of collisions with building glass. That's a lot of birds!

After reading about this problem with the green building at Emory, I came across another story, this one in Texas. It seems that a bird watcher had pulled over to the side of the road and was watching some rare endangered bird through his binoculars, when all of a sudden a feral cat appeared and ate the bird for lunch. This upset the bird watcher so much that the next day he came back with a gun and shot the feral cat. Unfortunately for the bird watcher, a nearby toll booth attendant that had been feeding the cat witnessed the killing and reported the man, who was then arrested. This lead to a big courtroom drama pitting the bird people against the cat people. It seems the feral cat population is somewhat out of control and the bird population is suffering from this as they are a prime source of nutrition for the cats. I'm not sure of the outcome of the trial, but I'm not writing this to take a side, maybe just offer a combined solution to both of these problems.

What if we captured a bunch of the feral cats and attached them to the side of the green building, with say, velcro. Then, every time a bird flies into the building, if it's flying fast enough it might take out a cat, thereby reducing the feral cat population and giving the birds a better chance at survival. I thought this idea was sheer genius, so I told it to my wife. She told me it was one of the most stupid things she had ever heard. Despite this single bad review, I am moving forward and am writing to my senator, who hopefully won't be out ducking sniper fire somewhere when the letter arrives.