Cormorants

Cormorants, or shitbirds, eat trout. I heard this on the news tonight. At work and in other conversations they've been cast as evil. Part of me agrees, and now the ones I see on the pond out my window are changed in my mind. Especially since I thought they where ducks but they are definitely cormorants. Trout fishing is now a competitive sport: me vs. shitbirds. So I want to shoot them, but all that permit application process is too much to bother with so I'll leave them alone.

Wanting to know more I looked them up in Wikipedia and found out the Chinese use them to fish with by putting a snare on their throats so they can't eat big fish, then pulling the big fish out of their mouth. Sounds like taxes. Also this poem by Amy Clampitt:

The Cormorant in Its Element

That bony potbellied arrow, wing-pumping along

implacably, with a ramrod's rigid adherence,

airborne, to the horizontal, discloses talents

one would never have guessed at. Plummeting

waterward, big black feet splayed for a landing

gear, slim head turning and turning, vermilion-

strapped, this way and that, with a lightning glance

over the shoulder, the cormorant astounding-

ly, in one sleek involuted arabesque, a vertical

turn on a dime, goes into the inimitable

vanishing-and-emerging-from-under-the-briny-

deep act which, unlike the works of Homo Houdini,

is performed for reasons having nothing at all

to do with ego, guilt, ambition, or even money.