Alcoholism - not just for homo sapiens

Posted by admin, Thu Feb 02 07:01:12 UTC 2006

Birds Die From Flying ‘Drunk’ Into Windows – Yahoo! News

The birds — whose remains were carefully examined to ensure they were not victims of avian influenza — had livers so diseased “they looked like they were chronic alcoholics,” Sonja Wehsely, a spokeswoman for Vienna’s veterinary authority, told Austrian television Thursday.


Ok, this one caught my attention because I remember my mom’s “drunk tank” for the cedar waxwings that used to haunt the front yard of our house when we had an ornamental crab apple tree in the front yard. In winter, the birds would gorge on the rotting, fermenting apples, and then proceed to fly drunkenly into the living room window.

After she watched the neighbours’ cat lurking in the front yard, and running off with a stunned (but not dead) bird,  she got an old cardboard box (drunk tank), lined it with rags, and found a pair of rubber gloves to handle the birds.  Every time she heard a bird hit the window, she’d go out and see if it was dead (broken necks are obvious when you pick them up) or alive.  If alive, but stunned, she’d pop it into the drunk tank for a couple of hours.  Then she’d tip it out of the box when it woke up enough to fly away.

Mom is such a softy.  :-)

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