What makes an animal?

Consider the Madagascar hissing cockroach. Or…maybe not. They are not exactly the Brad Pitt of the insect world. If I lived in Madagascar I’d be laying in a good supply of Raid.

But somehow PETA has overlooked the fact that scores and scores of obviously live and kicking Madagascar hissing cockroaches are allowed to be crunched to their doom by obviously insane “Fear Factor” contestants every year, who seem to be willing to eat or do anything for the prospect of going home with $50,000 (and probably some form of exotic parasitic disease).

Yet PETA nails a Virginia Beach nightclub that allowed contestants participating in the TV show on location at their establishment to swallow live goldfish.

I don’t know. Is it the “cute” factor? Must a creature pass some sort of beauty-pageant litmus test in order to be taken under PETA’s wing? Spotted owl? Cute. Baby harp seal? Awww. Madagascar hissing cockroach? Pass. Get some plastic surgery, dude, then send in that head shot again, OK?

Possibly the omission is because PETA has too much on their plates. What with getting all huffy demanding that a town near me change its name from "Fishkill" to something less violent toward our finny friends (Someone didn’t do their research: "kill" is Old Dutch for "brook," folks. Every other town around here is named Something-kill) to killing dozens of trees with mailings warning me of the evils of animal product testing, they’ve got quite a lot to do.

But hissing cockroaches aside, they've missed something really, really huge.

An estimated 1 billion birds are killed each year by windows.

That's right. Windows. (and that's why I use a Mac)

But seriously, according to ornithologist Daniel Klem, who was interviewed by NPR's John Nielsen on January 3rd's broadcast of Morning Edition, "It's a very common phenomenon. Birds are deceived. They just don't see glass as a barrier and this is a problem for them."

I'd say dying a horrible death by ramming your tiny little body head first into a solid pane of glass could be a bit of a problem.

But just to prove his hypothesis, Klem went into a forest and hung some windows off the branches of trees. Then he watched as an "appalling" number of collisions occurred. From an eight-foot perch, many of the birds smacked splat into the windows and died.

Cripes, he could have saved his research money (and many unnecessary avian deaths) and come over to my house to watch the dingbat birds doing the same thing here.

We've had a feeder up over our front stairs for at least four months now. The same birds keep coming around. They’ve somehow become smart enough to know how to get the seed out of the feeder. They’ve figured out that when the bowl becomes empty, to peck around on the stairs for what they’ve spilled. Then, when it’s obvious we’re not going to refill for a few days (we’re afraid of them getting so fat they won’t be able to get away from the neighborhood kitties) they stop coming, and when we refill the feeder, somehow they figure out that it’s safe to come back. You'd think they'd have a good bead on the lay of the landscape down by now, but no, there’s that THUNK again.

Window, dipstick.

Tiny pinfeathers are sticking to the panes.

And there’s your research.

And still, PETA hasn’t got someone on this. A quick search of their web site revealed that their only beef against birds and windows is the recommendation that when you cage a large bird (and remember, there are no such things as “caged” birds, all birds are wild animals and deserve to be free), don’t use a cage with glass sides or mirrors for the very same reason that birds can’t see it and will fly headfirst into it and knock themselves silly.

However, another site (birdsandbuildings.org) suggests putting a flexible screen outside your window (they claim decals don’t work) or using “fritted or patterned” glass. The problem is that humans have found these alternatives objectionable in their homes, as it interferes with the clarity of their views.

I mean, which would you rather have, a semi-obstructed view or billions of kamikaze birds going splat against your panes?

Frankly if a creature is that stupid, I’d rather spend my resources trying to save the Madagascar hissing cockroach. I could go on Fear Factor, eat a bunch of them, and put the $50,000 toward modifying their DNA to make them look like bunnies.

PS. Opus wants to thank everyone for their heartfelt well-wishes during his recent illness. He wants to assure everyone that he is fine, after eating a bunch of sardines and Pop-Tarts and sitting in the dark listening to his Moody Blues albums.