We’ve discussed this before and I’m sure it’ll come up again but the topic of the so-called "putrid pathway” at White Rock Lake keeps coming up — probably because it’s starting to feel like winter, which is when it gets really bad ...
Many of us who use the lake have come to accept the area along its trail, past Mockingbird bridge near the West Lawther curve, that stinks — and when I say STINKS, I mean that it makes the dog park smell like roses. It is the spot where the fish-gobbling double-crested cormorants roost when they migrate here for the winter. They live on fish from the lake and they poop a bunch, at least that’s how it’s been explained to me.
Wanna hear what they sound like? Check this out.
Anyway, I received an e-mail from a reader last week urging us Advocate editors to “get some commotion stirred up about those nasty birds (a.k.a. water turkeys) on the northwest shore of the lake, right before you get to Mockingbird … their pooh all over the tree's emits a retched fishy odor and it is slowly killing the tree's because the leaves can not absorb any sunlight,” he wrote.
I don’t know that I can do anything to rid our walkways of the dirty birds. But I suppose I can do my part to raise awareness. Here’s my advice: when you come upon the area in question — oh you’ll know when you are there — step off the path and up on to the road for a few feet. It’s just a slight detour. Or just hold your breath and run real fast through the section. Whatever you do, don’t look up.
Run faster. Cross the street. It's not just the cormorants pooping in the trees, it's also the robins and the grackles (!) and the chicadees and the swallows. Shall we ban them too? How about runners that ate beans for lunch?
Cormorants aid the lake biology by feeding on what's in it. They are beneficial. Bird poop doesn't kill trees. If it did, the Amazon rain forest would have been dead 500 years ago. So would the Great Smokey Forest. It gets washed off by the next rain. What remains is harmless. The city's complete disregard for tree care is what kills trees there. Like compacting their root system for the past 8 months while they rebuilt the trail for all those bean-eating runners.
Posted by: Audubon Barbi | Nov 12, 2008 at 10:08 AM
Beside stinking, it's dangerously slippery,--particularly when their is a little moisture on the ground,--particularly when you are riding a bicycle. I've never slid-crashed into stinky bird poop, but I'm sure someone has, and more will.
Even if you don't crash, riding or walking through it when there is moisture on the ground is almost too disgusting to imagine. I hold my breath and squint my eyes, but when the stink goes for a block on either side of the main problem, it's futile. I wonder about those people who live in the million dollar houses very close to the area.
I'm all for nature, but people deserve a little space too. And this isn't the Rocky Mountain National Forest, it's 3 miles from downtown Dallas.
Posted by: Bob Loblaw | Nov 12, 2008 at 02:18 PM