If you ever had any doubts about the veracity of flocks of birds attacking humans, as seen in Hitchcock's famous film "The Birds", experiences this summer in Geneva, Switzerland show that it does happen, and is happening in that fair city. Here is one woman's story. A crow was cawing in the Bertrand Park "and suddenly it pounced on my head, and pecked me with its beak. Two others joined in and likewise attacked my head. I was bleeding. I had lost my glasses. I was demented and ran to the little fountain at the Peschler Avenue side and I felt that all the crows in the park were following me and croaking. Then I burst into tears." This appeared in an article in the Tribune de Geneve at the weekend. Another woman, who walks with her dog Lindsay in this park every day, had a similar story. "I was out early. Between 30 and 40 crows were swirling around in the sky, making much noise." Evidently she was attacked and "I went home very fast. It will be some time before I get over my fright."
The head of the parks confirmed to the paper that in the previous few days he had had telephone calls from people who had been attacked by the same "big black birds". And he said that it had been like that for the past four years. It's not just that the birds merely want to attack the passers-by, their objective is the rubbish containers and their scattered contents.
In one park in central Geneva, the Parc des Eaux-vives, when the apprentices go to plant shrubs and flowers in the beds, the crows dig them up - even 10 metres away from the planters. Further, he said, the birds are so intelligent that they break the glass of municipal greenhouses and dig out the young plants. "Their resourcefulness is proverbial." He points out that, rather than opening a nut by banging it on the ground, they fly up and drop it where it will crack. Another park official tells with a certain gluttonous zest, "at Pregny Castle they break through the glass and pilfer the Baron's grapes and come out by the same hole - a feat no other bird can manage."
Three reasons for Geneva's problem. It is so near to open countryside where the birds can take refuge, and it has a lot of parks. Then the fact that shooting is prohibited. Thirdly, the litter society in which we live; much food around in bins and bags. The bad a period is from mid-April to the end of July. They live in couples for the breeding season and jealously guard the territory for a hundred metres around. In August, with their young ones gone, they become sociable again. You could shoot them in the countryside, not in the city; too risky. Poison? No, other birds could suffer. Any similar crow attacks this country?