Advice from a small town girl

Today I’m rethinking my position on illegal immigration.

Some undocumented aliens have set up housekeeping in my front yard.

They’re not unattractive, until they open their mouths. They certainly don’t speak English.

And they talk A LOT.

LOUDLY.

Their conversation always sounds urgent, unlike the measured, almost sweet cadence of their northern cousins.

They’re driving me crazy.

Or at least they will unless I find some way to live with them.

Because, you see, I realize there’s nothing I can do about them.

Sure, I could try to scare them away. Then they’d just become someone else’s problem. Like my neighbors, and I surely don’t want them mad at me.

I suppose I could try to kill them, but I know that more would follow. And I’m not much of a killer, anyway.

I’d love to be able to round them up and send them back where they came from, but that would be impossible. Not to mention costly.

The intellectual that hides away in the tiniest part of my brain finds the whole situation pretty interesting, but the “it’s all about me” part of me is up in arms.

These immigrants are using up resources meant for residents who were born here.

And they are EVERYWHERE. They’re in my neighborhood. I’ve heard them here in Odessa. My sister and father in Klickitat County have them in their neighborhoods.

They are the Eurasian collared dove, and their original range was warm temperate and subtropical Asia, according to Wikipedia.

By the mid twentieth century they had spread across Europe and north to Scandinavia. They were introduced in the Bahamas in the 1970s and now range as far as Alaska. They are considered an invasive species.

They seem pretty harmless, except to those of us who are sensitive to the repetitive “hoo HOO hoo” of their call, occasionally interrupted by a weird “raugh” kind of sound. They simply won’t shut up.

I love the sounds of their cousins the rock pigeons and the demure beauty of the mourning dove. But I can’t hear them anymore over the constant “hoo HOO hoo, hoo HOO hoo, hoo HOO hoo, hoo HOO hoo, hoo HOO hoo, hoo HOO hoo.”

I wonder what they taste like?