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BIRDS TAKE OVER TOWN

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Danielle
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Not since Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds has there been such a terrifying case of birds invading the normal lives of everyday people. Now this might seem like a joke, but imagine you live in a small town where the biggest condos in town are filled with birds making so much noise it drives you crazy.
This is the story in Kumai, Borneo, Indonesia where I was passing through on my way to an organutan preserved in the area.
I was surprised how modern some of the buildings were in Kumai and asked my guide who lived in them. He just smiled and said, peple don’t live in them, Birds do…
Yep, believe it or not, it was true - all these buildings are here for one reason and one reason only. To attract birds known as Swiftlets… the kind that make nests used in a Chinese delicacy know as “Bird Nest Soup.”
Bird Nest Soup, sometimes called Caviar of the East, is made from real bird nests created by these swiftlets. The reason why you can eat these nests is because they are not made from twigs or anything like that. They are made from bird saliva… yep that’s right… bird spit….
As gross as that might sound, the resulting nests are said to be full of nutrients and provide lots of health benefits. And it doesn’t taste that bad either.
In the old days, most of bird nests were harvested from caves where the swiftlets would make them. But then somebody figured out how to build these buildings in a way that attracts the swiftlets. Notice the loudspeakers - they blast bird sounds all day.
Local residents in Kumai told us that all the buildings are owned by Chinese business men. In the beginning it was just a few of them, but when the price of the edible bird nests went up to $3000 per kilo, the number of buildings shot up dramatically.
Today, there 100 times more birds than there are people in Kumai. The sound coming from the bird nest buildings is so loud you can hear it from way out in the middle of the river.
The racket goes on almost 24 hours a day, and as you might imagine. It is driving the town folks mad.
Some have taken to shooting the birds as they fly into town, while others have actually participated in violent protests that have wrecked bird nest building offices.
Despite the protests, the industry is growing bigger everyday, with new bird nest farm popping up from Viet Nam to Thailand.
And that my friend brings me to the question of the day. Do you think it’s a good idea to build bird nest farms, or should the birds be left to do it naturally in the caves.
Leave me your answer in the comments section below and if you want to see the video I made about the Orangutans, click right there.
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