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["Rodney" <reveland@collinscom.net>]

Here is a story of bird scaring I came across on the web. A few of the words 
were changed to clean it up:
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During my days at the Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food, part of my 
job was to scare birds off airfields, we would have to train the fire staff 
at major airports on how to scare birds off the runways. One day we were at 
Luton Airport talking to the fire service guys there, demonstrating the 
"standing on the bonnet of the landrover trick" slowly waving our arms up 
and down. Thus mimicking the wing beat of a bird of prey. This scares the 
bejeezus out of the little birds and they all bugger off. The bigger birds 
take no notice so we have different tricks for them. We have bird scaring 
tapes. These we made by capturing the birds holding them upside down by 
their feet and gently giving them a little shake. I must tell you now before 
any retribution from any animal welfare groups, that no birds were harmed in 
the making of this story (or the tapes). Anyway after giving the birds a 
little shake whilst holding them upside down they would inevitably squawk a 
bit, this would be their distress call. We recorded this on a Nagra reel to 
reel tape recorder, the one you see Bill Oddie carrying around with him. The 
recording would then be put onto C2 Loop tapes. At the airfields and 
airports we'd play back the tapes and the birds would hear the distress call 
and they'd fly off. Thus making safe the runways for the jets to take off 
and land. Easy peasy.
However some of the buggers got used to it, or were just plain stupid or 
deaf. Or all three so we had to back it up with firing off a thunderflash 
from a hand pistol. Great fun. So we're at Luton Airport doing this demo and 
we were in our Landrover on the skirt of the runway, armed with bird scaring 
tape, Loud speaker stuck out of the sunroof, a two way radio and a very 
pistol.
"Bird one. Bird one This is the tower. Over."
"Bird one here, over."
"Bird one, you have thirty seconds on main runway, over."
"Roger, thirty seconds, we're on our way. Out."
Slamming the Landrover into gear we sped off down the main runway, one 
hundred watts of power coming from the loud speaker on the roof, "squawk, 
squawk, squawk", leaning out the side window we shot the thunderflash up 
into the air. Dooofffff "Squawk Squawk Squawk."
We were still tearing down the runway leaning forward looking out the front 
windscreen for the thunderflash, we couldn't see it, where had it gone?
All off a suddenly it landed on the bonnet of the Landrover with an almighty 
bang and flash, SHucks!!!!
"Mayday Mayday, we've been hit. We're going down." The Landrover was 
swerving all over the place with the sudden shock off being blasted by the 
noise and light, I could hardly see a thing. I was blinded. The radio 
crackled.
"Bird One. Bird One Will you stop mucking about and get off the runway? 
Over"
We pulled off back to the skirt, a flock of black headed gulls, settled back 
down on the runway p*ssing themselves with laughter.
"Well that went well I thought."