Thcolumns: Starling superstores
Aren't starlings beautiful birds? Black feathers flashing green and purple as the sun rolls across their backs — lovely.
And so amusing! Starlings can learn to honk like a car, meow like a cat or whistle "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction."
During last year's Christmas Bird Count, the Tehachapi Mountains Birding Club counted only 180 starlings, but the year before there were 2,137 — more than any other bird in these mountains.
Starlings, you may know, are not native to Tehachapi. North America's 200 million starlings came from Europe.
They came here and just took over. How? Well, starlings will eat just about anything. And then, after kicking other birds out of prime nesting spots, they lay eggs twice as often.
But that's okay. Starlings save agriculture a lot of money in insect control, don't they?
Actually, most experts think starlings harm agriculture more than help it. When thousands of starlings swoop down onto a wheat field, they tear it up, eating the whole plant. They destroy entire crops of grapes, olives and cherries as well.
And that's just for starters. Flocks of starlings have brought down planes. Starlings can carry human diseases. And so on.
But I think, as a whole, we are happy when we see a starling, the sun glinting cheerily off its flecked feathers, singing a song it stole from a California towhee.
And why not? It's pretty and it gives us everything we want from a bird: a nice song and one less grasshopper.
Starlings, in other words, are the Wal-Mart of birds.
Like starlings, Wal-Mart gives us everything we want from a store.
Attractive prices, for instance. I got lost in Anaheim last month, stopped at a Wal-Mart for the rest room and left with an 88 cent "Burns and Allen" DVD. I couldn't help myself! 88 cents! What a deal!
Like starlings, Wal-Mart drives out the competition, takes over nesting sites, eats up money native businesses once relied on.
They pit city and county governments against each other, jockeying for less (or no) sales tax, sending in legions of lawyers to threaten and cajole, and then, when a deal doesn't seem sweet enough anymore, they leave a massive, empty box to clutter up the landscape.
Make no mistake: Wal-Mart is huge and powerful. It makes more money each year than the entire nation of Saudia Arabia, oil or no oil.
But who cares? Lots of people won't give a spit if having a Wal-Mart kills three dozen native businesses. After all, "Burns and Allen" for 88 cents.
And like Wal-Mart says, people choose to work there, so it can't be that bad.
But if, say, Save Mart were to die under the mighty Wal-Mart's sword, where else are its employees going to find work?
According to Alan Schlottmann, a Professor of Economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who has studied the impact of big box stores, "The net impact on employment of a Wal-Mart Supercenter after five years ... is basically a slight loss."
In other words, there are fewer jobs after Wal-Mart comes to town.
Add this to the fact that Wal-Mart's workers earn, on average, $8.50 less per hour and are less likely to have health benefits. Can anyone say "Medi-Cal"?
"In essence ... the Supercenter has other businesses and local taxpayers subsidizing the health care of their workers," Schlottmann said. "As a business strategy, frankly, in many respects it's brilliant."
Yes. Brilliant like a starling.
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