The Bigotry Of Flighty Birds

When I lived in Tucson, my landlord's parrot had very specific hates. She hated women (I think she viewed them as competition for human male attention). The postal worker was a bearded man, and so his sight would send the bird over the edge (but whether it was the beard or the postal-worker status, I don't know). The parrot also hated other birds. Now and then, my landlord would let the canary out. The parrot would wait until the canary flew over and was sitting on her cage, and then she'd carefully nip off the bird's toes, until the bird could no longer remain upright. A very cruel (but loving) bird! So, I'd tell this mail carrier in Calgary to be very, very afraid:

Dogs are usually pegged as a postal worker's worst enemy, but in one southwest Calgary neighbourhood a hawk is the one spoiling for a fight.

Mail delivery in Bayview has been temporarily suspended because a hawk has been nose-diving the local mail carrier.

"The hawk just really seemed to have a hate on for that particular letter carrier," Teresa Williams, spokeswoman for Canada Post, told CBC News.

"The attacks got so bad that she was resorting to wearing a bicycle helmet. And the hawk even broke the bicycle helmet."

...Heinz Sander, 92, said he regularly sees the mail carrier hiding from the hawk under trees or in his garage.

"I saw [the hawk] coming, I was ducking ... it was so fast and he was up again. It's fairly big ... more than a metre or so."

He likened the attacks to a fighter plane.

"I was in the air force you know ... in the Luftwaffe, in the German air force."

Mail will return when the hawks leave. Wildlife officials say that could be in a few days, once the hawks head south for the winter.