Hellscape of the week: West Palm Beach, Florida

The Ibis Golf and Country Club is an upscale gated community in West Palm Beach, Florida. When New Yorkers Anthony and Siobhan Casimano were looking for a getaway home, it probably looked pretty good to them. Sun. Sea. Sand traps. A straight shot from NY.

What they didn’t see when they passed papers earlier this year was that there would be oodles of vultures puking and crapping all over their property.

Siobhan Casimano described the smell as “like a thousand rotting corpses.” The vultures have destroyed screen enclosures, and have overtaken the pool and barbeque. The few times the family has visited, they’ve had to park their car in the garage or the birds peck at them with their beaks.

A “thousand rotting corpses”? Welcome to the Sunshine State!

The Casimanos aren’t the only ones in the hood with this plague being visited upon them. Cheryl Katz had a bunch of vultures find their way into her pool enclosure. Smart enough to get in, the birdbrains couldn’t figure out how to get out.

“Imagine 20 vultures trapped, biting each other — and they can bite through bones,” she said. “They would bang against my windows running away from a bird that was attacking them. Blood was everywhere. It was a vile, vicious, traumatic event. And it was Memorial Day, so no company I called would come out to help me.” (Source: HuffPo)

I have a pretty good imagination. But, regrets to Cheryl, I’m not willing to use any of that pretty good imagination picturing a bunch of trapped vultures biting “through bones.” I’ll take her word that “it was a vile, vicious, traumatic event,” even as vile, vicious and traumatic events go.

Fortunately, West Palm’s finest came  to the rescue and moved the vultures along.

I’m guessing that this gated community was built along the migratory path of vultures. And you kinda/sorta can’t blame a vulture for doing what vultures do. But a big part of the reason that the Ibis neighborhood is under siege is thanks to one of their fellow homeowners.

Katz said she has seen the neighbor give bags of dog food and even a roasted chicken to the vultures.

There’s only so much the homeowners association can do, as the vultures are a protected species. (Maybe not for long. Wildlife protections are being tossed out right and left. This one might be a righteous hit.) And it doesn’t sound as if appeals to human decency are working with this neighbor from hell. Nor have fines and a cease-and-desist letter.

A few years ago, there was a problem in neighboring Brookline. An escaped pet cockatoo was pecking through the wood work on an upscale house (the birthplace of RFK) owned by a retired federal judge. Efforts to capture the bird were thwarted by a couple who were feeding Dino but refused to help capture him because they felt the bird should be free. But that was just one rogue bird hellbent on destruction, not a flock of them.

Speaking of flocks, I was curious just what you would call a flock of vultures. A puke? A crap? A nuisance?

Turns out, there are a few possibilties:

A group of vultures is called a committee, venue or volt. In flight, a flock of vultures is a kettle, and when the birds are feeding together at a carcass, the group is called a wake.

Committee sounds too peaceable. Venue doesn’t do justice to their West Palm behavior. Volt might work, since it could be construed as shorthand for revolting.

I also like kettle, as in this is a fine kettle of vultures.

As for wake, well, I’ve been to plenty of wakes and while there’s generally plenty of chewing the fat, I’ve yet to see anyone feeding on the carcass. At least not literally.

Folks have tried a lot of things to keep the vultures off their property – fireworks, balloons, fake owls, blasting music.

Katz tried the owl approach.

“The vultures chewed the owls apart,” she said. “They ripped the heads off.”

I’m not sure what the distinction is between vultures and buzzards, but the only place I’ve seen vultures/buzzards was on the grounds of USAA in San Antonio, Texas. USAA was a client of the company I was working for, and I went down for some sort of meeting. I remember two things about USAA. It was an immense facility, and employees rode bikes (indoors) to get from one section to another. And when we sat in our client’s office, looking out the window, we could see trees populated by vultures/buzzards. Needless to say, it’s hard to concentrate on matters to do with application software when a bunch of buzzards are staring you in the face.

Meanwhile, Anthony Casimano seems to be maintaining his sense of humor.

It’s a disaster,” he said with a laugh. “It’s a laughable disaster. You can’t make this up. That’s why it’s laughable.” (Source: WPBF)

Still, until the problem is resolved, the Casimanos are staying put in New York. With luck, the vultures will be gone by winter, when you really need to exit New York and enter Florida.

Too bad there’s not a way of funneling the puking, crapping vultures into the yard and lanai of the a-hole who’s feeding them.

And, come to think of it, Mar-A-Lago is just a couple of miles away, as the vulture flies. Perhaps there’s a way a kettle of vultures could be redirected there…