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Groton Daily Independent
Friday, Aug. 25, 2017 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 056 ~ 49 of 65
con McFalconface” and “Scott Hattebird,” after former A’s star Scott Hatteberg.
“We took off the tarps in the third deck for the rst time in several years, so it seemed to open up the
opportunity for the birds to come,” said David Rinetti, the A’s vice president of stadium operations. There were a few day games this season when more than 300 gulls circled in and around the ballpark. Players and fans noticed, complaining the birds were making a mess. So Rinetti and his staff needed a
solution - and fast.
“I looked up ‘bird abatement, Bay Area’ online and came up with a company that provided these kites
that are falcons that supposedly worked to keep seagulls away,” Rinetti said.
They are doing the job so far. The duo even startled Span when the Giants played a Bay Bridge Series
game in Oakland earlier this month.
“It got me at rst. I thought they were real,” the center elder said.
At the Giants’ waterfront ballpark, as fans leave, another competition begins: gulls y in from McCovey
Cove to hunt for snacks.
“They eat food, scoop it up, compost it,” Giants head groundskeeper Greg Elliott said. “It’s ne for us,
but the birds are more of a nuisance for ballplayers.”
In 2012, the Giants were counting on a red-tailed hawk nicknamed Bruce Lee to solve their “gull-drums.”
His presence kept the skies clear for a while. The team built a box for Lee to nest in, hoping to keep the gull-chasing predator at AT&T Park, Giants senior vice president of ballpark operations Jorge Costa ex- plained at the time.
Yet Lee has since left his post, and, naturally, the gulls are back.
Eating leftovers is far from healthy for the birds, said marine biologist Dr. Jim Harvey, director of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in Monterey County.
“They’re supposed to be eating sh and squid,” he said, “so eating human food, especially ballpark food, that’s not good.”
Harvey, who also happens to be a longtime Giants season ticketholder, said he is hardly optimistic that baseball franchises will nd a permanent, perfect solution because birds always adapt.
“You can put a physical barrier up, create netting around the whole park. But that’s not going to hap- pen,” he said.
Span just wishes fans might consider doing their part by cleaning up their own messes, if only to bene t the birds - and keep them as far as possible from his center eld workspace, of course.
“It is like a snow globe, and I’m surprised that one of them has not been struck by the ball,” longtime Giants bench coach Ron Wotus said.
Freak ballpark accidents involving birds have happened in the past.
Hall of Fame left-handed pitcher Randy Johnson struck and killed a dove with a pitch in 2001. The now- infamous video clip shows the ball drilling the bird, sending an explosion of white feathers into the air.
In 1983, star Yankees out elder Dave Win eld inadvertently took a gull’s life in Toronto making a throw between innings. Police charged him with animal cruelty, but the charges were later dropped.
Wotus joked that if an accident does happen again, perhaps the Giants might take advantage. “We can use a seagull ricochet for an RBI double,” he said, chuckling.
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More AP baseball: https://apnews.com/tag/MLBbaseball
Swiss police: 8 missing after mudslide near Italian border
GENEVA (AP) — Rescue workers used a helicopter and dogs Thursday to search for eight people still miss- ing in a Swiss Alpine valley a day after a muddy rockslide barreled through a village on the Italian border. Images from the scene showed a trail of destruction left by a river of mud and stone. An alarm system went off in time to allow for the evacuation of about 100 residents in the village of Bondo, 130 kilometers
(80 miles) north of Milan.
The slide Wednesday morning sent about 4 million cubic meters (140 million cubic feet) of rocks and