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Save The Parrot!

People and pets get into jams:

A man stumbled off a cliff while chasing after his pet parrot, California officials say.

The man was trying to get his bird when he “fell over the side of a steep cliff” in O’Neill Regional Park on Sunday, March 17, Orange County Fire Authority said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“Fortunately, he landed where he did and didn’t continue down, because the crews that were on scene reported that it was about a 40-foot drop after that,” Capt. Thanh Nguyen told McClatchy News in a phone interview.

... The man was placed in a harness and airlifted from the area, all while clutching his parrot that he tucked under his shirt, Nguyen said.

Paramedics checked the man for injuries, but he was fine, according to Nguyen. Nguyen said he’s unsure of how the bird got away initially.

Music To Soothe The Savages

What’s the story with these things? Apparently they are self-sustaining surveillance devices placed in supermarket parking lots. Seemingly, they are supposed to keep overnight campers and various derelicts away from the supermarket by playing music day and night so hideous, so wretched, so mind-alteringly bad, that no sane person would want to remain nearby. For that purpose something from the death metal genre should suffice, or New Country, or various commercial jingles, but instead they play a lot of very pretty 19th-Century ballet music; Tchaikovsky, and the like. Instead of scaring people like me away, the devices seemingly lure people in. Let’s camp here! So, what gives? Have I misunderstood their purpose?

It Put the Modern in Mid-Century!

@dinosaurdinnertheatre Concrete #mst3k #mysterysciencetheater3000 #rifftrax #comedy #dinosaurdinnertheatre #mrshow #comedybangbang #concrete #midcenturymodern #1960saesthetic #1960 #midcentury ♬ original sound - Mike Baird

The Wild Parrots of Los Angeles

Home away from home:

For example, the driest month in Southern California is significantly drier than any portion of their native habitats in the western and eastern coastal regions of Mexico, the study says. The timing of the precipitation here is also different, with a winter rainfall regime rather than summer rains.

That “urban oasis effect” created by sprinkler watering systems “could partly explain why introduced parrots do not seem to be spreading beyond urban centers,” it says. “Their intelligence and behavioral plasticity might further allow them to adapt to urban life.”

The look of Southern California’s green canopies has changed significantly since the 1950s and ’60s, when developers turned up their noses at native oaks and sycamores. They chose instead to landscape their subdivisions, apartment complexes, business parks, shopping centers and roadways with nonnative trees, including sweet gums, camphor, carrotwood, fig, and ficus trees — all favored by parrots. 

For reasons that are not fully understood, several hundred parrots seek evening accommodations each night in the limbs of fig and London plane trees lining a bustling stretch of Rosemead Boulevard in Temple City. The odd locale is believed to be one of the most populous roosting sites for parrots in the Los Angeles area.