Well, I suppose I should first introduce myself before I start mouthing off. My name is Lily Crow and I live here in Venice.

Anyway, there has been a lot of hooplala over those big RV’s parking in the streets. Now ordinarily, we crows stay out of human affairs for a flock of reasons. One: humans are stupid. Two: their affairs are predictable and repetitive. Three: we are busy ourselves with plotting the take over of the Universe. And many other reasons I cannot tell you without breaking the corvid’s oath.

It was difficult, however, to ignore the war against the RV’s and the dwellers in them. So much rushing around on both sides — meetings and flyers and voting and voting again. From an aerial view point, we crows were quite perplexed: What was the big deal? Why were the humans battling so hard? And more importantly, would we get any carcasses out of it?

Thank the Morrigan for the Beachhead! One of our clan managed to steal a copy and find out what exactly had happened. We were so impressed by the Beachhead’s coverage of the OPD battle that we decided you would be the perfect place to air our own important parking battle.

To tell you the truth, as I must (being a crow and all), this new battle I think is so important hatches out of a strong bias I have towards one of you humans. He is so well-trained by us crows that we could almost call him a slave to us – but we hate that word. He admires, respects, and most importantly FEEDS us lots and lots of peanuts. So we have decided to take up one of his personal battles. Besides, he drives a beautiful, shiny black car with a HUGE bird on the hood. Something even a crow can admire.

Anyway, this fellow’s car keeps getting smacked while it is parked. Time after time after time. Front bumper, back bumper and even occasionally, the door. It’s especially entertaining when his wife catches the person hitting his car! We think she is part banshee. This brings me to the next parking battle: whether to allow people, at any hour of the day or night, to park in the streets who do not know how to parallel park. You know, those people who think bumpers are for bumping into. I wish I could tell you these Bumper People come in one color, one sex, one class, or one type of car. They exist EVERYWHERE.

One idea we had is to have all Venetians tested to see if they can parallel park. We figure there could be a special zone created by the City where humans could prove their parking prowess. Those who pass would receive a special sticker, preferably with a picture of a crow on it. We crows like to see our image everywhere.

Those who fail the parking test can then be removed by the City to Bumperville, where they can bump their hearts and heads away with one another. Oh – and Bumperville should be miles and miles away so as not to create a stigma in Venice.

We crows feel that if Bumper People were forbidden to park here in Venice there would be such an enormous wave of goodwill from our man’s heart that it may very well spread through all of Venice. And, although you may feel this has nothing to do with OPDs and RVs, Bumper People have something in common with RV haters: they look in their rear view car mirrors and see only themselves!

So, Bumper People Be Gone! And another thing, could someone please tell me why people are worried about human waste on the street when the evidence points to big, steaming piles of dog shit? (which my other human ally, typing my thoughts, suddenly realized she had stepped in by the horrific odor coming from her sandals.)

Ok, enough time wasted in human affairs. And remember – we crows are all around you, watching you when you think we are not, prepared to tell the truth no matter what it sounds like.

Time to fly!

Lily Crow