Subject: [Tweeters] fireworks -- West Seattle like a war zone
Date: Jul 5 09:24:33 2006
From: Suzanne Krom - szkrom at drizzle.com


I don't remember a year like this one for fireworks. It was like being in the middle of a war zone here in the heart of West Seattle, with no safe refuges for birds. When there was still some light in the sky, I watched them flying frantically from tree to tree trying to escape this year's free-for-all.

People were shooting off the same fireworks I see at the Gasworks and Ivar's displays -- huge, ongoing explosions and cascades of sparks ending with booms that shook my windows and sent shock waves through my home.

I contacted the Seattle police to verify if fireworks are still illegal in the city limits and the answer was a definite yes. The officer said this year was far worse than any other he had seen previously and encouraged me to call 911 next year, although he added that there are always many more reports than they can respond to. That sounds like an exercise in futility to me. He told me that, unfortunately, the reservations sell everything that the largest commercial displays use to anyone willing to pay for them. I had plenty of those blasting around me.

So far this morning, no goldfinch have come to my feeders where normally there are four regular visitors this year, and only one bird has visited my black oil sunflower feeder although I haven't seen who it is. I've been seeing up to ten chickadees and house finches at that feeder. With bird extinction rates up, it seems Seattleites did far too much last night to contribute to the reduction of our local bird populations.

So Tweets, did you have a similar experience in your neighborhoods? If so, are some of you interested in working together to establish a campaign. We would work as a group to identify the result we want to accomplish, whether it's to encourage enforcement of the law or something else. Do we approach this from the standpoint of the impacts on birds and other animals, or other means? Is this a Seattle effort, since fireworks are already banned here, or do we make this bigger? We need a combination of good strategic minds and worker bees. What do you all think?
Suzanne Krom
West Seattle
szkrom at drizzle dot com