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to be the hotel swimming pool and there was a small caf in the building that my Mom would dress up for once in a while to take us out to lunch. Mom always looked her best whenever she went outside. The hotel was of a pre world war design and the rear of the building; protected by a six foot high fence was off limits for the entire 16 years I spent growing up. The alleyways between the three story apartment buildings on the back side of the lot, however, provided an opportunity to play kick the can and hide and seek, games that later became outlets for a myriad of delightful opportunities to exercise our imaginations.

One summer the Starlings arrived. Flocks of black birds that littered the sidewalks with their droppings from the silver maple trees that lined South Shore Drive began to arrive in late June and had been there when my brother Rick and I decided to take matters of environmental protection into our own hands. There were thousands of them that summer. Noisy animals the size of crows. Loud. Frightening. Their presence required us to avoid the sidewalks on our way to explore other areas of the neighborhood and take the alleyway paths through the backyard. The birds were disturbing, invading our territory in their Alfred Hitchcock-like invasion.

Luckily, among our small collection of possessions were two rubber-tipped, spring-loaded dart guns that we only used when my parents were out of the house. Unfortunately, the rubber tipped darts might make the Starlings fly up in large, frightened flocks but would never help us conquer the problem of eradication that my brother Ricky and I had in mind. So, like any creatively minded city kids, we thought of a very inventive solution. We found three-inch long sewing needles in my mother's sewing kit and, after removing the tips of the darts, threaded the needles through the rubber allowing enough space to replace the tips on their plastic shafts and load them into the single shot pistols.

Off we went, out the front door, past the doorman and down the sidewalk along the street-lined Maples. We spread out. Ricky would take to the field while I shot up into the trees to either strike the birds or drive them into the field where they would be easy prey. Shooting up into the trees, there seemed to be little effect but our mission was solid. Strategically planned. Tactics that Zorro might have envisioned.

I continued shooting. The dart would fly up in an arc about 20 feet in the air but the birds didn't seem to notice.

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