Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 337, Ed. 1 Thursday, July 6, 2017 Page: 3 of 22
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STATE/NATIONAL
3A
Denton Record-Chronicle
Thursday, July 6, 2017
Annual Arlington egret invasion a stinker
hat-making industry.
In 1886, snowy egret plumes
developed during breeding sea-
son were worth $32 per ounce,
twice the value of gold at that
time, according to the Cornell
Lab of Ornithology.
The migratory bird law actu-
ally took elfect in 1916, making it
illegal to take, possess or sell any
migratory bird “or any parts,
nests or eggs of such a bird”
without a permit. More than
800 birds are currently on the
list of protected species.
Experts have put the snowy
egret’s population at around L3
million.
to grow,” Rentschler said. “But
next year we have a plan.”
Although Renschler calls the
Wilshire rookery “the big one”
going on in Arlington this year,
massive egret roosting in North
Texas neighborhoods is not an
uncommon problem.
Hundreds settled into the
Tanglewood neighborhood in
Fort Worth in 2012, and almost
immediately it was too late for
residents to respond. But the
next year, they had trees
trimmed and were lying in wait
with a variety of noisemakers
and other hazing tactics.
In July 1998, the city of
Carrollton notoriously demon-
strated the wrong way to handle
an egret problem, launching a
pre-dawn bulldozer assault —
“Operation Remove Excrement”
— on a large nesting site of
egrets and other migratory
birds.
By Robert Cadwallader
Associated Press
ARLINGTON- The egrets
have landed, again.
But this year, for the home-
owners near the Wilshire Boule-
vard/Gaye Drive intersection in
Arlington, the visit is an inva-
sion.
Jf
n
*
'H
The Fort Worth Star-Tele-
gram reports as many as 200 of
the lanky white birds are flop-
ping awkwardly in the tops of
the towering trees, roosting,
squawking, falling out of nests.
And, oh, the bird droppings.
Norma Crader, 76, and her
neighbor, Betty Robertson, 84,
have taken the brunt of the
abuse. Rarely venturing from
their covered porches, they are
figurines in a nasty snow globe
of falling white poop and plum-
age, with the relief of the birds’
departure still months away.
“I’ve lived here for 62 years,”
Robertson said. “And believe
you me, I’ve never had the trou-
ble I’ve had with these freakin’
birds. The bird poop — my walk
is covered in it. I can’t even get in
my house. It’s all over my red-
wood deck. I can wash it all off,
then get up the next morning
and it’s already started again.”
And there’s no recourse, not
this season. Once the birds —
cattle egrets, snowy egrets and a
handful of birds known as little
blue herons, according to the
city — start nesting and produc-
ing eggs, they’re protected from
harassment under the Migrato-
ry Bird Treaty Act of 1918.
“You can’t do anything,” said
Crader, who moved into her
home just two months ago, well
before the egrets moved into her
trees. “Once they start nesting,
that’s it until October.”
To be fair, the egrets paid
dearly as a species to enjoy their
century of special protection.
They were hunted to the brink of
extinction by the early 20th cen-
tury for their plumage, a de-
mand driven by the women’s
*4
r
\
“They made a big comeback,”
said Michael Francis, president
of the Fort Worth Audubon So-
ciety, a local chapter of the non-
profit wildlife conservation or-
ganization.
Though an egret is the na-
tional group’s symbol, Francis
has mixed feelings about them.
“Those birds are so nasty,”
Francis said, expressing sympa-
thy for the Wilshire neighbor-
hood. “You’re supposed to leave
them alone. But watch for them
next year, and just deter them
any way you can, short of shoot-
ing them.”
Trimming trees, making loud
noises and other tactics are fair
game for next year, before the re-
productive ritual begins anew.
Last year in the Wilshire neigh-
borhood, a few blocks south of
Randol Mill Road and east of
Fielder Road, there were far
fewer feathered visitors, and
they were gone in a few weeks,
said residents and Hien Tran,
the neighborhood postal carrier.
“I don’t know why so long
this year,” Tran said. “I walk here
every day. They have pooped on
my head.”
Also bad, he noted, is the
smell. It’s strong, resembling a
musty, rarely maintained live-
stock bam, and it reaches well
beyond the clustered nests, or
the rookery, hovering over the
Paul Moseley, Star-Telegram/AP
Egrets young and old fill the trees of two houses on Wilshire and Barker streets in Arlington on
Friday.
More than 300 birds were
killed, sparking a public outcry, a
federal investigation, fines
against the city and suspensions
of three city officials who
planned the operation. Plus the
city had to pay for the treatment
and relocation of hundreds of
injured birds, a cost reported at
more than $100,000.
Officials of animal services,
city parks and even the U.S. De-
partment of Agriculture met
with Wilshire neighbors to dis-
cuss ways of creating “aversive
conditions, or hazing” next year,
Rentschler said. Tools could in-
clude air horns, loud bells, pro-
pane cannons and reflective
streamers and “scare-eye” bal-
loons to hang in the trees.
The city will put together a
package of some of those items
for the neighborhood. Also, the
neighbors have discussed hiring
a tree trimmer to create wider
spaces between branches to
make nest building more diffi-
cult. Rentschler recommends
tree canopies be reduced by
about 30 percent.
handful of homes.
But the odor is more than fe-
ces. The egrets are fishers, and
they feed their young by regurgi-
tating partially digested fish and
frogs and the occasional mouse
into their beaks. But they often
miss their target, and the pun-
gent liquid and parts dribble
through the nests to the ground,
said Ray Rentschler, animal ser-
vices field operations adminis-
trator.
f
I
%
*
And infants are frequently
falling from their rickety nests to
their deaths, where some have
rotted. But Crader and Robert-
son say the animal services crew
has been diligent about picking
up the dead, as well as the juve-
niles that survive the fall and end
up walking aimlessly through
the neighborhood.
Those youngsters are taken
to a wildlife rehabilitation center
to be cared for until they’re old
enough to be released on their
own. The two women search
their yards daily and call the city
when they find dead ones.
<-
L
Robert Cadwallader, Star-Telegram/AP
Norma Crader sits at her home in Arlington on Friday. Egrets
by the hundreds have nested in the trees of two homes, one
Norma’s, in an Arlington neighborhood, creating not only a
noisy mess, but a smelly one as well.
Which is usually daily, Rent-
schler said.
By late June, he and his peo-
ple had collected 50-60 dead Service just to lay hands on the
birds and 49 surviving juveniles young egrets,
almost exclusively from the
Crader and Robertson proper-
ties. The city had to get a permit
from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
‘That rookery will continue
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■
Kathy Willens/AP
A security guard stands at attention as New York Police Department Officer Miosotis Familia
is memorialized before the start of a baseball game between the New York Yankees and the
Toronto Blue Jays in New York on Wednesday.
Richard Drew/AP
Copies of the New York Post with an illustration of President Donald Trump as a profes-
sional wrestler on the front page are displayed at a newsstand in New York City on Mon-
day. On Sunday, Trump’s fondness for wrestling emerged in a tweeted mock video that
shows him pummeling a man in a business suit with his face obscured by the CNN logo.
Cop killer had
about officers
ranted
killing
CNN gets heat over
handling of mock video
said. He didn’t get off a shot, au-
thorities said.
The burst of gunfire as the
Fourth of July wound down was
initially mistaken by some for
fireworks.
Familia, 48, was a 12-year
veteran of the force who spent
her entire career with the de-
partment in the high-crime
Bronx precinct. The command
post there had been set up and
staffed around the clock since a
triple shooting in March.
“She was on duty serving this
city, protecting people, doing
what she believed in and doing
the job she loved,” Mayor Bill de
Blasio said.
Police said they were trying
to establish the motive for the
shooting.
While tensions have been
running high in recent years be-
tween police and black people
around the country, there was
no immediate indication the
killing had a racial dimension.
Bonds was black; Familia was
black and Hispanic, her family
having come from the Domini-
can Republic. She apparently
had no previous contact with
him.
gunned down in their cruiser by
a man who had announced on-
line moments before that he was
planning to shoot two “pigs” in
retaliation for the police choke-
hold death of Eric Gamer in
New York. The gunman, 28-
year-old Ismaaiyl Brinsley, then
killed himself.
Attorney General Jeff Ses-
sions called Familia’s killing a
“murder in cold blood.”
“Sadly, it is the latest in a
troubling series of attacks on po-
lice officers over the past two
years. These attacks must stop,”
he said in a statement.
Bonds was caught on video
leaving a convenience store,
then moving tightly along the
wall, pulling a hoodie over his
head and walking purposefully
toward the command post vehi-
cle with gloved hands, according
to police. The video didn’t cap-
ture the shooting itself but
showed him running away with
a gun in his hand, police said.
All new patrol cars rolled out
by the department have bullet-
proof glass, and older vehicles
are being fitted with window in-
serts to harden them against
gunfire.
But there are no plans to do
the same with the rolling com-
mand centers, officials said.
By Colleen Long
and Jennifer Peltz
Associated Press
NEW YORK - The killer
who strode up to a mobile police
command post and put a bullet
in an officer’s head Wednesday
had ranted in a Facebook video
last September about law offi-
cers killing and abusing people
and warned them to leave him
public apology for the Tmmp
video — he called it a prank
and for some racist and anti-
Semitic postings also made
under that name. He said he
was just trying to get a reaction
and didn’t mean what he said,
and was closing his Reddit ac-
count.
tier whose face was replaced
with a Tmmp picture bashing
several other men identified as
“CNN” with a chair. “Is CNN
going to blackmail this person,
too?” Hannity asked.
CNN said Wednesday that
it did not publish the user’s
name out of concern for his
safety, and that any claim that
it tried to blackmail or coerce
him was false. Kaczynski
tweeted that the user told him
he had not been threatened in
any way.
CNN’s online critics, in-
cluding Donald Tmmp Jr.,
claimed the Reddit user was a
15-year-old boy. CNN said he
was an adult male and Kac-
zynski tweeted, “People claim-
ing he’s 15 are wrong.”
The video sent out by
Tmmp on Sunday morning
had been retweeted more than
340,000 times by Wednesday
morning. That passes Tmmp’s
tweet the morning of last No-
vember’s election — “TODAY
WE MAKE AMERICA
GREAT AGAIN! - as his
most-shared post, Twitter
said.
By David Bauder
AP Television Writer
NEW YORK - CNN says
safety concerns led to its deci-
sion not to reveal the identity
of the man behind a doctored
anti-CNN video. Yet the way
the decision was explained
and deep distrust of the net-
work among President Don-
ald Tmmp’s supporters pro-
voked a backlash Wednesday.
The network said late Tues-
day it had identified the Red-
dit user who originally posted
an old WWE video of Trump
“roughing up” pro wrestling
maven Vince McMahon, su-
perimposing the CNN logo
over McMahon’s face. Trump
tweeted a link to the video,
with some modifications, and
it has become the president’s
most-shared social media post
yet, according to Twitter.
Reporter Andrew Kaczyn-
ski said in an online story that
CNN had found the Reddit us-
er, who used the tag “Ha-
Solo,” and reached out
to him Monday. Before return-
ing Kaczynski’s message the
next day, the user posted a
alone or “we gonna do some-
thing.”
CNN said online that it had
decided not to publish the us-
er’s name because he is a pri-
vate citizen who apologized,
showed remorse and said he
would not repeat his ugly be-
havior. “CNN reserves the
right to publish his identity
should any of that change,”
Kaczynski wrote.
That last sentence made
CNN a target.
“That’s essentially black-
mail,” wrote conservative ac-
tivist Ben Shapiro. “That’s
CNN stating that it will out the
guy if he dares to defy their po-
litical perspective or offends
them sufficiently.”
Such charges spread swiftly
online. Fox News Channel
host Sean Hannity shared an-
other video on Twitter, this one
showing a professional wres-
“I’m not playing, Mr. Officer.
I don’t care about 100 police
watching this,” 34-year-old ex-
convict Alexander Bonds said,
adding: “It’s time for people to
wisen up.
Ten months later, Bonds
went up to the RV-like com-
mand post in the Bronx and am-
bushed Officer Miosotis Fami-
lia, shooting her through the
passenger-side window as she
wrote in her notebook around
12:30 a.m.
New York City Police Com-
missioner James O’Neill said
Familia was “assassinated in an
unprovoked attack on cops.”
Familia’s partner frantically
radioed for help, and officers
caught up with Bonds about a
block away and killed him in a
hail of about 20 bullets when he
pulled a stolen revolver, police
nA-
Still, the attack recalled the
2014 ambush killings of two
New York City officers who were
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Parks, Scott K. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 337, Ed. 1 Thursday, July 6, 2017, newspaper, July 6, 2017; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1131377/m1/3/?q=%22%22~1: accessed July 7, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .