Luna's War

Luna is a lazy old cat who more or less owns the cafe I hang out at. Apparently she's raided a starling nest and killed one of their young. By the time I arrived, this bird was above Luna in the half-dead tree by the cafe's patio, shrieking bloody murder, and shortly joined by another starling.

I've had starlings all around me pretty much all my life. But they are accidental immigrants from Europe. I say "accidental" because it's not their fault that we have starlings here as an invasive species, but the fault of a nit-wit Shakespeare enthusiast who decided to import all the birds mentioned by The Bard to America. Now after some 120 years, there are more starlings in North America than in all the rest of the world.

But Luna hardly paid any attention to the outraged family of starlings. She's lucky they didn't eat her for lunch, because starlings can roost in hordes numbering one million, and in 1960 100,00 of them flew into the engines of a passenger jet at Boston, taking it down and killing 62 people. Now if they can do all that, they can take on one old cat, even a self-entitled one like Luna.

A Scientific American article on this subject states that in Shakespeare's play Henry IV, Part 1, "Hotspur is contemplating driving King Henry nuts by having a starling repeat the name of Hotspur's brother-in-law Mortimer, whom Henry refuses to ransom out of prisoner status. "Nay, I'll have a starling shall be taught to speak nothing but 'Mortimer.' "

Stay tuned, in case Luna either disappears or has her name changed to Mortimer.

EDIT: Thanks to Ceridwen, I'll add in this amazing clip of a murmuration of starlings!