Toyko v the crows
Tokyo is in the middle of a war... against crows.
And one of the most technologically advanced cities on the planet is losing the battle with nature.
The campaign reportedly began after a crow buzzed Governor Shintaro Ishihara as he played golf, prompting a declaration that he would turn crow-meat pies into Tokyo's favorite dish.
So far the crows show no signs of waving the white flag, according to a report at NPR.
In fact, they're on the offensive - dive bombing unsuspecting city folk or pooping on them.
They nest in utility poles and cause blackouts, even stealing steal fiber-optic cables to build nests, sometimes disabling parts of the broadband network.
Despite eight years of campaigns and millions of dollars spent on the war on crows, their population is rising - increasing by 16 per cent in 2009.
Some money has been spent on improving garbage disposal and making the trash less accessible to the crows.
Another prong of the government's crow strategy involves using traps to catch and kill crows.
The crows are lured into traps by lard. Once in, hanging spikes stop the crows from flying out and every three days the trapped crows are taken away to be gassed.
But it tends to be the young and inexperienced crows who get caught. The grizzled old campaigners aren't easily caught out.
So the war continues. But I can only see one winner.
Weird Science Factoid: More than ten people a year are killed by vending machines. Chocolate can kill...
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Authors
Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
