By Mark Bennett
TERRE HAUTE — The most significant moment during the first meeting of the Terre Haute Crow Committee came when the participants scheduled a second meeting.
Now, I’m no advocate for endless meetings. The scene in Monty Python’s film “The Life of Brian” best summed up meetings. As three renegades from the People’s Front of Judea plan to overthrow the Roman empire, they whip themselves into a frenzy, insisting they need to stop gabbing and act now. “Right, we can just sit around here all day, talking, passing resolutions, making clever speeches, and it’s not going to shift one Roman soldier,” declares one rebel.
Then, when a woman runs into their meeting, hysterically pleading for them to stop a tragedy outside the tent, one guy firmly responds, “Right, this calls for immediate discussion.”
At least they were meeting, though.
Terre Haute is not going to shift one crow unless it comes up with a plan. And formulating a plan to disperse the city’s annual roost of 30,000 to 80,000 crows requires an organization and a series of meetings.
And then, immediate action.
Step One came Tuesday morning in a, yes, meeting room of the Vigo County Public Library. Fifteen people attended. The mayor, Duke Bennett, showed up. So did folks from the Purdue University Vigo County Extension Office, the Historic Landmarks Foundation, Downtown Terre Haute Inc., the Wabash Valley Audubon Society, TREES Inc., the Chamber of Commerce, Union Hospital, Indiana State University and the Vigo County Parks Department. The turnout was excellent. Almost everyone had a question or idea to contribute.
The 90-minute discussion turned lively at times, with folks quizzing ISU biology professor Steve Lima about the reasons why so many crows have annually converged on Terre Haute from October to March, year after year since the 1990s. (It’s got urban warmth, light to keep them safe from predator owls, the Wabash River and nearby farm fields.) They tossed out ideas about controlling the birds – everything from crow birth control to pyrotechnics, to killing some of them with laced grain supervised by the U.S. Department of Agriculture or with hunters out in the countryside.
They talked about the poopy mess the crows leave behind, night after night, and its effect on afflicted homeowners, businesses, churches, the hospital and the university.
And they talked about cost — the bottom-line issue, or at least apparently so. Who will pay for people to fire off pyrotechnics to get the crows to move from heavily hit areas? The city’s taxpayers? The county’s taxpayers? A coalition of businesses and organizations? All of the above?
“It always comes down to money,” the mayor said, “and the city doesn’t have a lot of money.”
True. Still, something can and should be done to shift the crows to, well, some other unfortunate place. Life would be better in Terre Haute with fewer crows.
“I do think we have to come up with a plan, and then look at the cost of it,” said John Hancewicz, director of Purdue’s Vigo County Extension Office.
Which brings us to the real bottom-line issue – willpower.
By March, the 30,000 crows mostly will be gone for the winter. Suddenly, our “crow problem” won’t seem like a problem after they leave. Out of sight, out of mind.
It’s like the need for alternative energy sources. When gas prices skyrocket, Americans realize our dependence on foreign oil causes wars, paralyzes other industries and fouls the air. Then, when the pump prices settle back down, everybody forgets about ethanol, biodiesel fuel and plug-in hybrid cars.
But the crows will be back. There could be 30,000 next winter. Or 20,000. Or 80,000.
No matter the number, the people living and working where they gather will feel the impact. The crows found new hangouts this year downtown, at ISU and at Union Hospital. Next year, it could be elsewhere. Wherever they bunk, folks will be frustrated by their mess.
Keith Ruble offered a reasonable suggestion that a group of volunteers be organized to implement crow-dispersal tactics. That approach has been somewhat successful in crow-hotspot Lancaster, Pa. The Lancaster County Crow Coalition fields calls from residents about problem areas, and responds. They use crow effigies to scare the birds, and set off rounds of fireworks to scatter them.
The most important message on the coalition’s Web site, www.lancast
ercrows.org, comes in an eight-word reminder: “Crow management will continue, each year, probably forever.”
Yes, the crows won’t go away by themselves. They may keep coming to Terre Haute, uh, forever. But Lancaster is trying, with some success, to reduce their numbers and limit their impact on that town.
Thankfully, Mayor Bennett’s public affairs director, Darrel Zeck, said in Tuesday’s inaugural Crow Committee meeting that he will contact the mayors of three crow-targeted cities — Lancaster; Auburn, N.Y.; and Indianapolis.
Then, the committee scheduled a second meeting for 10:30 a.m. March 23 in the library.
Jim Luzar, a Purdue Extension educator, noted the importance of that followup session, and others, leading up to the crows’ return next October. Committee members need to formulate an affordable plan during the spring and summer. Then, act.
“Sustaining this effort is going to be important,” Luzar said, “so that we don’t wake up this fall and start recycling all this again.”
Right, then – let’s shift some crows.
Mark Bennett can be reached at (812) 231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.
