Birds

Maybe they thought you were from Texas, RD.

Watch out for swans...they look all lovely but they'll break your bloody arm. The best place for them is on the banquet table.

There is no recorded evidence of a swan breaking anyone's arm Jude, it's just one of those things that people say because some doctor probably once wrote something along those lines to express the strength of the bird. It's not as though arm breaking is their main attack method and as long as you keep your hands behind your back your safe and can kick the big white buggers to peices. they don't float around in close groups mumbling, "opposable thumbs my arse! can't even bloody fly with 'em and they come over here all high and mighty- picking things up with them and folding them. Grrrrr! just bring them over here you featherless twat and I'll soon show you what a limb's for!"

"What you having for lunch today Brian?" "Stale bread again, what about you?" "I was thinking about trying fishing tackle"

"gotta keep my strength up. I've got six arms to get through before lunch and I'm on stage tonight" "Bloody ballet!" "I know! I wish I'd auditioned for Swan lake now instead of trying to branch out, this make up's a bugger to get out of your feathers!"

One swan attacked my brother when he was a toddler...no arm broken but could easily have been - ok it was protecting its young but I bet one has broken some kids arm - really, properly, not just urban-legendy!

Too bad KFC can't deep fry swans' drumsticks. Imagine the size of the bucket they'd need!

You don't actually eat Kentucky Fried Roadkill do you? I will eat McDonald's BK but I draw the line at that stuff...unless VERY drunk!

I'm the polar opposite: I don't do Mickey Dee's but have an abiding love for fried chicken. Fortunately, I haven't found a KFC in the lovely city of Cambridge, so I won't be tempted. I'm not much for fast food, anyway.

KFC? oh yes! anything that claims to be 'just like' KFC? not in a million years!

I do eat it (as i said - when drunk) but I always pick the coating off and just eat the chicken. The batter bit tastes like J**m - err, erm, err, not that I know what that tastes like but how I imagine it would taste. I bet I know why the colonels "special recipe" is such a big bloody secret.

*snicker* The fried and crispy coating is the best part. Especially the 'extra spicy' stuff. And, *cough* speaking from personal experience, the coating does NOT taste, hypothetically, like what you hypothetically purport it might, hypothetically, taste like. *ahem* *goes off to rearrange pencils in desk drawer*

taking the skin off a KFC? you might as well just eat any old chicken! the skin is the reason for buying it surely? tastes like sp**k eh? well it's something to consider if I ever decide to turn gay I suppose... every cloud and all that. saying that, are you sure man milk tastes exactly like KFC and not just 'similar'? I don't want to down my first gay load only to find I've been duped into buying the seminal equivalent of 'Miss Millies Fried Chicken'

Hahahaha! 'Seminal equivalent'! This is truly a seminal moment in the history of the phorum.

I wouldn't know ...the association comes from the erotic fiction I have read when err, erm , well, you know, err ...trying to get it banned. which often describes love juice as tasting "salty". And I find the coating of KFC over salty - so much it tastes of f-all else. Which has led me to the conclusion...

And what exactly does any of this have to do with Grackles pecking your eyeballs out?

'Salty' doesn't do it justice, jude. 'Nasty' is more like it. *cough* Blackbirds like to fly low across the road. Recently, to my horror, I saw, on the sliproad into Cambridge from the A14 Milton roundabout, underneath a red Jeep Cherokee, the body of a female blackbird (thus, it was brown), hanging from the driveshaft. She was still alive. Her head must have been caught in part of the mechanism whilst she flew between the tyres. Her little legs were still kicking as she struggled to free herself. The driver, a woman in her mid 40s with black wavy hair, was completely oblivious to this life and death struggle happening under her feet. Is that better, RD?

It would have been better if the other birds noticed this and pecked her eyes out for it.

That eye-pecking raven scene in the Omen II was a classic!

Hay. This is no joke. The bloody thing have been swooping on people in the field at the back of my home. When I took the dogs out for a walk, my cats try to follow. One of them actually got attacked by a swooping blackbird. Its Hitchcock all over again, I tellyha. Any way. Talking about crows nest. Where missi?

lock 'n' load people! A'hm gonna kill me a new duvet!!!

Years ago I had a friend who worked on a local newspaper who reckoned it was a great wheeze, if they had a slow news week, to invent and publish stories about animals, birds and/or very young children, eg wild dogs attacking squirrels, birds swooping down on unattended toddlers. The idea was that a) people love this kind of stuff and b) none of the protagonists can read. Stories about Japanese tourists also had a lot of potential. I'm not saying that's the case here, but ever since, I've always been wary of local news reporting.

Grackles are very agressive birds. I have hundreds of them on my satellite dish and they do not take well to your messing with their young-uns. I've had them swoop me on a number of occasion for no good reason other than I was there.