The great apricot heist

Flickr photo by moose477.

The birds are back.

Every summer, a flock of small birds attacks the plum and apricot trees in my backyard. Armed with their sharp eyes and pointy beaks, they fly into the trees, peck at the not-quite-ripe fruits and then fly off satisfied with their oh-so-destructive little meals.

After five years of shooing them off, I decided to try to outsmart them with a secret weapon: a plastic owl, which I picked up at a local warehouse store for about $14.

This plastic owl is a marvel to behold. It's 15 inches tall. It has a painted-on face and feathers and yellow glass eyes that flash in the sunlight like those of some evil characters on a popular sci-fi show. To be fair, the plastic owl looks absolutely nothing like a real owl, which has a majesty and presence in the night sky that simply can't be matched by a mere plastic replica. But then again, the plastic version isn't a true predator: It only has to fool a bunch of birds, and we all know how small birds' brains are.

I attached a piece of kite string to the top of the plastic owl and hung it in the lower branches of the apricot tree late one evening. Would the owl work as advertised? I wondered. Or would the birds ignore the damn thing and go about their pecking and nibbling business as usual?

The next morning, the owl was still securely in position. There was an ocean breeze in my backyard, as there often is, and the owl swayed and spun in the branches as if it were ready to take flight. But of course, it went nowhere.

The birds turned up right on schedule. They hopped across the grass and a few of them flew into the apricot tree only to be frightened off by the scare-owl. They appeared to be genuinely afraid of it, and their purpose clearly was thwarted by its presence.

News reports and online chatter suggest that these plastic scare-owls can work quite well for a while, but that sooner or later, even stupid birds get wise to the fact that the owl is a fake. After that, the homeowner must strategically move the owl from location to location so the small-brained birds (and worse yet, squirrels) will think that the same owl is actually a new predator. I've kept the scissors and the kite string handy for just this purpose. ...CONTINUED

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