A huge pile of troublesome bird poop
Plus the transportation tab rises, a word-nerd fight on the income tax, and some recommended reading
It takes about 18 pounds of food to raise a ring-necked pheasant from chick to maturity. Game birds are efficient little machines, so we’ll estimate about 75% of that feed is absorbed as calories1. That leaves about 4.5 pounds of poop.
You have not accidentally stumbled into an edition of Gamebird Gazette. The digestive tract of a pheasant is newsworthy for the Observer because a massive state-owned pile of bird poop is causing literal headaches and lots of fiscal pain in Centralia.
That’s where the state runs an obscure pheasant breeding operation that, until recently, had about 45,000 frequently-shitting birds. In tonnage, that poop is equal to the weight of Chicago’s famous Bean sculpture, or the maximum takeoff capacity of a Boeing 757 plane.
Why should you care? Because bird poop produces nitrates, especially pheasant do-do. And that pheasant breeding operation, the Bob Oke Game Farm, sits right on top of a shallow aquifer that is the sole source of drinking water for about 30,000 folks in Centralia. High levels of nitrates in drinking water mess with oxygen in our bloodstreams, causing nausea, elevated cancer risks, and other bad stuff. They can be critical for infants, producing a medieval-sounding condition called “blue baby syndrome.”
