Does this mean the economy is in trouble?

[Patrick Bond]

Maybe aside from the promise of bankers jumping out windows, it's not 
so easy to keep these birds alive in Florida (except by keeping 
roadkill quotients high on those neverending highways)? Last weekend 
I was out at what's called a "Vulture Restaurant" at a 
beautiful gamepark in the low-lying mountains due west of Pretoria, 
and found that the (private-sector) owners of the park have to kill 
the neighbourhood cows periodically, and place their carcasses near 
the nests of a flock of about 400 vultures. The birds had been 
reduced to fewer than a dozen ten years ago by ranchers and farmers 
(via poison and potshots). The vulture comeback represents the 
success of neoliberal economics: fewer farms, including the lowest 
output of maize this year in 60 years, correcting for rainfall (which 
means more expensive basic foodstuffs for the masses), and 
thanks to three 30% crashes of the currency since 1996, 
foreign tourists (especially trophy hunters) flocking in to see 
wildlife an hour from SA's largest airport. Under such conditions, 
farmland and ranchland are being converted to game, willynilly, and 
these chappies are desperate to grow anything (vultures!) that 
appears natural and wild, no matter how unnaturally their feeding 
schemes appear to voyeurs like me...


> From:          qualiall_2 at yahoo.com
> Date:          Thu, 01 Feb 2001 18:34:27 -0800
> Buzzards flying around the bank....foreshadowing of things to come? Hmm? 
> 
> =)
> 
> Office workers in Orlando, Florida believe they are living in a scene 
> right out of Alfred Hitchcock horror movie The Birds. 
> 
>  Scores of turkey vultures have been circling the 28-floor Bank of 
> America building and the Orange County courthouse - riding the thermal 
> updrafts. 
> 
> The red faced birds peck at office windows, stare curiously at employees 
> - putting them off their work - and prevent them from going on to 
> balconies. 
> 
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1147000/1147553.stm
> 
> 
> 
>