bottom of the mustard, third from the top, on the left

On my morning walk along the Red Hook waterfront today, I was a bit alarmed to see a large bird standing dumbly on the walkway before me. In my morning stupor I actually took it to be a bald eagle due to coloration and size, but then I realized it was a seagull that just appeared considerably more massive than usual due to the open wing hanging simply along its right size, dragging on the ground. Oh, shit, I thought, this bird is fucked.

not looking good

I had that sick feeling that you get when you see a dog get hit by car. I didn’t have my cell phone on me as I wanted to maintain the serenity of my morning walk to the water (though it was less about being disturbed by calls than about ditching the clock, which functions as my watch). So I kept walking to the end of the peninsula behind Fairway and turned to gaze out at the harbor, looking at the Statue of Liberty head-on (Red Hook is the only place in New York where she’ll look you in the eye). It’s very calming to listen to the lapping of the waves and watch the slow progress of the boats and see the distant industry ringing the harbor. There were also half a dozen black, loon-like ducks feeding just down the rocks from me. And there was that other bird…

trying to see eye to eye

I looked back the way I’d come and no longer saw the seagull. Maybe the injury wasn’t so debilitating. But there were a string of planters and pylons between the two of us now. And, sure, enough, first I spotted a guy coming my way, then I saw the seagull hobbling into view. How the hell had he gotten so messed up. Botched landing? Botched take-off? Hooligans? Dog attack? Brittle bones due to pollution? Lack of pre-flight stretching? On my way back down the walkway, I mumbled, I’ll call somebody, gull, as I walked past and off to Fairway.

After I unloaded the groceries, I found New York Animal Care & Control on the web. A recorded message told me to either call another number or call city services at 311. I wasn’t sure that NYACC was really the one to help, as they seemed more of an animal adoption agency, so I called 311. After a number of recorded messages (swine flu, alternate-side parking restrictions, subway info) I got through to an operator and explained, sort of sheepishly, that, well, there was a seagull with a broken wing and, I don’t know, do you guys do anything about that? The woman, in the lovely lilt of a Caribbean accent, repeated what I had told her and then said, hold on, yes, there was someone who could help. Then she connected me to… New York Animal Care & Control. After ten or fifteen minutes on hold, someone answered and I, again, explained the situation. Hmm, he said, we really only handle dogs and cats. But he gave me another number to call. And who is this? I asked as I wrote the number down. The Department of Environmental Conservation. Now we’re getting somewhere.

I called the DEC. The phone was answered within a few rings, which seemed like a good sign. I explained the injured gull situation again and, yes, the guy said they did assist birds. They were only two people in the city who would tend to injured birds, he informed me, and they did it on a voluntary basis. That’s commendable, I thought. Then he explained that, what usually happened was the person calling to report the injured bird would actually go pick up the bird and transport it to one of the two volunteers. You want me to pick up the seagull? I asked. Well, no, that is a really big bird, he admitted. These people were usually dealing with sparrows or the like. Well, I don’t know who is going to let me carry a seagull on a bus or the subway. No, no, it’s usually done in a car, the guy admitted. Granted, I have access to a car, but during the day my girlfriend uses it to drive to work way up in Westchester. So am I just supposed to leave it to die? I asked. Well, no, people bring in big birds all the time. Somebody brought in a swan. Somebody else brought in a red-tailed hawk. Guess those birds are just much prettier, I said. No response. So the city doesn’t have anybody to come and help? I asked. No, he said. Well, I just think that’s kind of bullshit. I’m just a phone operator, he said. So the city doesn’t do anything? Well, that would require an ambulance, he said. Well, it could just be a car, I offered. A car is an ambulance, he countered. And then we’d also have to train the responders on how to handle an injured bird. But instead you expect the public to handle the injured bird? I demanded. I’m just a phone operator, he repeated. And I’m just going to go to the next call. Thanks. Click.

Sorry, gul. I’ll check in on you when the car gets home tonight. And I’ve completed my seagull-handling course.

All I know is that in L.A., they’ll come move a skunk for you. WTF, NYC?

Click here to view the embedded video.

so long, suckers

First, my farewell email to the LA Times was excerpted in an LA Times article about farewell emails several months after I was laid off by the company. I made some “Superman II” references and likened Tribune/LA Times owner Sam Zell to an older version of Non, the mute Kryptonian with the bum heat vision. It was nice to get my name in the paper again, but the article had a sort of undercurrent of “gee, I’m not sure these kinds of farewell emails are a good idea.”

fire bad

Now, after relocating to New York and not finding work for several months and then deciding to volunteer some time at a non-profit bookstore that raises funds for homeless people with HIV/AIDS, I got a note from the volunteer coordinator that NPR was looking to do a video blog story about unemployed volunteers. I figured NPR was cool and, hey, you know, I might as well try to wring some kind of publicity out of my volunteering, so I volunteered to do the interview. I volunteer at the bookstore because it’s a charitable thing to do, plus the bookstore frequently hosts cool literary events featuring writers such as Jonathan Lethem and David Shields. And it’s a book store, and, well, I like books. Volunteering seemed like staying at least tangentially involved in the literary world. So after talking to one of the NPR producers for the NPR, the video crew — who turned out to just be Columbia journalism students — came and interviewed me during my shift. Here is the hatchet job.

cartoonish

I have worked in reality TV, and I have worked in journalism, so I know a certain amount of cherry picking goes into compiling and article or video. You put your trust in the producers/writer/editor’s hands. And these guys squished me like a baby bumble bee. I come off looking like some scoundrel who is dicking around the good people of the non-profit world, leaving them hanging at a moment’s notice. What the video didn’t include is that the bookstore’s volunteer program asks volunteers to agree to a three-month commitment. I have been volunteering there for about two and a half months, so if I did get a job at Barnes & Noble (a line that was basically fed to me by the interviewer and then taken out of context) in the next few weeks, I would have fulfilled my commitment. And there was another unused line where I said that if I did get a job, I would continue to volunteer, though I would probably have to rearrange my schedule (I currently volunteer on Tuesdays, but would probably have to shift to the weekends). Then, on top of that, there’s the part where the volunteer coordinator complains about us unemployed volunteers and how she doesn’t want to spend “five hours” training someone who will then only use that skill for “three hours.” Okay: one, of all the things I have been trained to do at the bookstore, none have taken more than five minutes to learn; two, the volunteer coordinator has never taught me any of these things anyway; and, three, a volunteer shift is four hours, so what is this using the skill for only three hours thing? The math doesn’t add up. Are blogs not subject to fact-checking? I thought this was NPR, not Fox 11.

off you go

Okay, so be crucified in the video itself was rough handling. But then this “Renee” woman gets in a few shots in the comments section under the video blog. She explains that, as a person who works in the non-profit world, it makes sense to her that “these folks [me] are not being welcomed as true volunteers.” “True volunteers.” I am an imposter. A poseur. A burden.

No good deed is left unpunished.

ouch