Four and 20 blackbirds baked in a pie? Not quite.
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Version 0 of 1. A little before dusk on March 14, 1934, a man was seen walking on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, a shotgun in his hands. A Capitol police officer approached the man. “It’s my duty to tell you that it’s against the law to shoot the birds in the Capitol grounds,” said the officer. “Well,” replied the man, “you have done your duty.” He then walked up to a tree, raised the gun and pulled the trigger. A cloud of buckshot erupted from the barrel and about 50 starlings tumbled to the ground, dead. That the gunman, South Trimble, was not arrested probably had something to do with his job: He was the clerk of the House of Representatives and a former congressman from Kentucky. Also, Washingtonians were none too fond of starlings. Alexandria’s Jim Trimble, South Trimble’s grandson, shared the story of his grandfather’s hunting expedition after reading my recent columns on the starling colonies that live in downtown Washington. In the 1920s, thousands of starlings roosted on buildings at 14th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, including on the District Building. By 1934, the birds were a nuisance at the Capitol. Said one Capitol policeman, “They chase the starlings off the District Building and they come up here to roost: then Congressmen give us hell if we don’t get rid of ’em.” In February 1934, the Capitol police tried to shoo the birds away by firing blanks, first from shotguns, then from revolvers. One newspaper said it sounded like the Battle of the Marne. As with most forms of starling control, it only worked for a while. South Trimble favored a more lethal approach. After he felt he had shot enough starlings, he had them gathered up and taken to the House restaurant. There, the chef baked them into pies. Trimble had invited the House leadership, including Speaker Henry Rainey and Majority Leader Joseph Byrns, to lunch the next day to sample what he told them was “reed bird” pie. They had no idea they had actually eaten starling pie until they read it in the afternoon’s Washington Star. “I want to tell you starling pie is good,” Byrns said. “The meat is tender and sweet; so sweet, in fact, I even picked the bones.” The Post noted that “some cocktails were reported to have preceded the starling pie. And that may explain, in part, the appetites of the guests.” Starlings continued to bedevil the Capitol until 1962, when electronic countermeasures were deployed. A mesh of wires was laid on the façade of the Capitol and the Supreme Court. Shocking the starlings seemed to do the trick. Uriel Perlman of Poolesville grew up on Commonwealth Avenue in Mount Vernon, N.Y., a small town just north of New York City. During the ’60s and ’70s, a large group of starlings decided to move into the trees along Commonwealth. “Thousands of them would gradually appear and roost on the trees that lined our quiet, suburban street,” Uriel wrote. “For four months, starting at dusk, they would scream, howl, cry, mate, poop, die, and in general be a real pain in the neck.” The street and the cars were covered in droppings. After a rain, the smell was nearly unbearable. As in Washington, residents were open to any ideas to get rid of the birds. “One year, my father and our next door neighbor were contacted by a mysterious man by the name of Mr. Stanke,” wrote Uriel. “He promised, for the sum of $1,000, he could rid our street of these dreaded birds. He arrived one day carrying a suitcase which, he said, would be used to rid them. My best friends, Nina and David, and I were on the front page of the Daily Argus welcoming Mr. Stanke and his mysterious suitcase. We followed him around like a Pied Piper until he finally opened up his suitcase. What we saw were two pieces of aluminum with handles. He called them, I believe, the Clappers. He walked up and down the street banging these pieces of aluminum together. Every night for several weeks, he repeated the process. The final results? Chaos, which led to a heavier dose of bird droppings.” When the children of Commonwealth Avenue got older and more daring, they invented a game: “We would start at the top of the street and yell as loud as we could as we ran down the street. Whoever got hit the most lost. We weren’t the brightest back then.” The starling infestation lasted 10 years until, gradually, the birds started moving to the next street over. Eventually they stopped coming to Commonwealth Avenue altogether. Wrote Uriel: “We could never understand why they suddenly stopped until it was explained to us that due to the rotation of the earth, the starlings moved. Whether or not that is true or not, I have no idea. But the fact remains, eventually they stopped.” I suppose that’s good news. Twitter: @johnkelly For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/johnkelly. |