Get...Out...Of...The Way!
There we were, holding short of the runway waiting for another airplane to land so we could take off. The other plane landed and as he was clearing the runway at the midfield taxiway he reported to tower that one of his crew had spotted something or other on the runway with the night vision gear. Neither the pilot nor the crewman knew what it was because the pilot never saw it and the crewman didn't see it very clearly.
Tower acknowledged and a few seconds later told us it would be 10 minutes or so before they could get a car out there; would we like to taxi down the runway and see what it was? we promise you won't lose your place in line. Ok. Fair enough and we agreed.
I turned on all our lights and started moving slowly down the runway. The object turned out to be a pigeon. A live pigeon setting on the runway who wasn't the least bit inclined to move as our roaring machine moved to within 6 feet of him. Now what do we do? I didn't want to run him over and we couldn't leave him there 'cause we might hit him on takeoff and break something on our mighty machine. The pigeon wouldn't be bluffed.
One of our crew members said he would get out of the airplane and chase the bird away. Which he did. We saw him rush at the pigeon waving his arms and that solved the problem. It looked pretty funny. He got back in our airplane and we went on our way.
That is what we do, stalk the night sky and take direct action against birds.
(this story is almost all true. our guy didn't run after the bird waving his arms. he walked at it with a quizzical expression, but the waving arms thing sounded better.)
Tower acknowledged and a few seconds later told us it would be 10 minutes or so before they could get a car out there; would we like to taxi down the runway and see what it was? we promise you won't lose your place in line. Ok. Fair enough and we agreed.
I turned on all our lights and started moving slowly down the runway. The object turned out to be a pigeon. A live pigeon setting on the runway who wasn't the least bit inclined to move as our roaring machine moved to within 6 feet of him. Now what do we do? I didn't want to run him over and we couldn't leave him there 'cause we might hit him on takeoff and break something on our mighty machine. The pigeon wouldn't be bluffed.
One of our crew members said he would get out of the airplane and chase the bird away. Which he did. We saw him rush at the pigeon waving his arms and that solved the problem. It looked pretty funny. He got back in our airplane and we went on our way.
That is what we do, stalk the night sky and take direct action against birds.
(this story is almost all true. our guy didn't run after the bird waving his arms. he walked at it with a quizzical expression, but the waving arms thing sounded better.)
posted by Carl at 5:08 PM
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