Selected Articles from the LAND Newsletter

President's Report

By Richard Volk, LAND President

Hello from here. I’m going to devote this report more to property rights.

We live in a two story house with many windows. Each have shutters on them. A couple of years ago, six cliff swallows decided they were going to take control of the three windows on second floor on the north side of the house. They quickly began to build nests above the shutters. I didn’t like their plan and destroyed their nests. The swallows didn’t give up and somehow they became five. They evidently didn’t like uneven numbers and returned with a crew of six after about an hour. This happened about four times and always the group returned as six. Seeing this wasn’t going to work my wife said we should hang plastic bags on each shutter to see if the swallows would leave. Behold, after they circled around for about 45 minutes they left and have never been back since. Now the barn swallows think that is their domain! After two weeks of broken nests they have also given up.

The birds have other buildings to make their nests on. I'll be darned if I am going to let them build on the house, in the car garage or the shop. I'm sure glad the swallows can’t make the laws because I’m sure I'd lose! But I certainly am not going to give up my property rights!!

That’s about all I have this time. Here’s hoping a speedy and prosperous harvest to all.