I’m sure you’ve all heard about the plane that landed on the Hudson Thursday. I saw it on the TV at the gym yesterday, but I’m a little behind on my news so I didn’t read the articles about it until today and kept hearing about these “bird strikes”. Sometimes I have a bit of gullibility and take things literally so in my head I was thinking that birds were purposely and maliciously attacking planes. You know strike as in to strike back.

So I Googled it and found the wikipedia article on bird strikes and was elucidated (that’s not a word). I think it’s a misnomer. We should call them airplane kill or bird crashes or bird bumps — anything that would make clear the fact that these are unintentional. Birds are not actually trying to sabotage planes and kill humans.

That wikipedia article has some gruesome photos — the worst one is of a deer caught in the landing gear (I don’t even have the heart to link to that photo). I’m so disturbed by it, I can’t stop looking at it!

The fascinating thing is that I fly a lot — probably at least 12 times a year I take a round trip flight somewhere. Most often to southern California to visit my son and sister, and I’ve been doing that since I moved to SF about 9 years ago. All those trips and this is the first time I’ve ever even heard of a bird strike. I’m ok with that. In fact, I should probably consider myself lucky (or blissfully ignorant :)