Leptoptilos crumeniferus. Pleased to meet you.

I am a frequent scavenger, and my naked head and neck are adaptations to this, as it is with the vultures that I often feed. In both cases, a feathered head would become rapidly clotted with blood and other substances when my head was inside a large corpse, and the bare head is easier to keep clean.

I am large and powerful and will eat different kinds of animals, either alive or as carrion, including small mammals, reptiles, and similar prey. My living prey includes termites, fish, locusts, grasshoppers, caterpillars, frogs, rodents, crocodile eggs and hatchlings, quelea nestlings, doves, young and adult flamingos, cormorant nestlings, and pelican chicks.

Pelican chicks are especially tasty.

I was featured prominently in Irvine Welsh's novel "Marabou Stork Nightmares."

Things I Hate About Pigeons

The way they bob their heads.

The way they look up at you with a terrified, wood-stupid expression as you approach.

The way they coo.

The way that the male pigeon circles around the female with his plumage expanded, cooing.

The way that the female invariably rejects him.

The way that he always becomes persistent thereafter, and continues circling.

The way that the baby pigeons grow to the size of their mothers, yet still hang around trying to get a free bite to eat.

The way that you can never kick one. They always launch themselves slightly outside the orbit of your boot at the last possible second.

The way that they hobble on their nubs.

The way that they perch on something above you, and then look down with the terrified, wood-stupid expression.

The way that they always take off in unison in a sudden frenzy of flapping.

The way that they share food by vomiting into each others' beaks.

The way that they pick on the least popular pigeon by standing on his back.

The way that they all descend on a single crumb at once.

The way that the crumb then makes its rounds through the whole group.

The way that they can't figure out how to break apart a piece of food too big to swallow, so they try to shake it into pieces. They look ridiculous doing it.

The way that they occasionally shit on me as I stand under the electrical wires.

The way that they all go for too few perches, and then battle over them, flapping around incessantly and letting loose a shower of feathers.

The way that they circle around on the sidewalk all day, looking for crumbs.

The way that they spend so much time not flying and being on the ground, when they're birds.

The way that they cautiously approach where you sit, circling back uncertainly.

The way that they refuse to eat my perfectly good grape.

15 Quick and Easy Ways to Save Money in the Recession

The slow economy got you in the financial doldrums? Fear not. There are myriad simple ways to cut every day expenses and increase your income. Consider the following.

1. Cut out the tips. They’re not really mandatory. You’ll save over 10% on everything that you used to tip for. If you are given a hard time for this habit, claim that you are of the Jewish faith. The Torah forbids tipping.

2. If you’ve got kids in college, you how hard it can be to make ends meet. But if they’re in college, they’re over 18, and you have no legal obligation to them. Cut them off and make them pull their own weight. Most likely, they'll drop out, because studies show that college graduates scarcely make any more money than dropouts anymore. One way or another, the experience will build character.

3. Rein in the food budget by eating cheaper foods like Spam, Chef Boyardee, Ramen, and Spaghetti-Os. Cup O’ Noodles is a nutritious alternative to the homemade alternative. Try Cheez-Whiz in place of real cheese. Garnish with French’s yellow instead of Dijon, etc. You can also save on beer and liquor by buying brands like Shlitz, Miller, and Winer’s Cup.

3a. Not eating is an attractive alternative to eating, given the great cost savings. Prisoners at Aushwitz-Berkenau were known to eat little more than bread crusts and water, and some of them survived for several years.

4. If your house has a garage, consider renting it to an illegal immigrant and parking the car outside. Even the average broom closet is big enough to sleep one illegal immigrant, due to their short stature and modest requirements. Check your floorplan; you might be able to stick three or four immigrants in your house. Also consider parking a travel trailer in the front and back yards, connecting them to household utilities with a combination of extension cords and garden hoses. Dispose of black water from the trailers in a lawn sump.

5. Whenever you joint casual acquaintances to a bar or restaurant and accrue a common bill, pretend to have “forgotten your wallet.” The others will cover you. Avoid them thereafter and they will eventually forget. Be sure to maximize the potential of this money-saver by gorging yourself on a series of the most expensive dishes available every time you forget your wallet.

6. Hire illegal immigrants to do your work. You can gouge them in whatever way you'd like because they have no legal recourse.

7. Whenever dining at a pizza parlor or similar establishment, ask for a “water” cup instead of ordering a drink. Then fill it with whatever beverage you really want at the soda fountain. Great way to save a few bucks here and there!

7a. Take a crate of empty Latin American Coca-Cola bottles and a capping machine to the pizza parlor with you. Order a drink, and then fill and cap all the bottles at the soda fountain. Sell them for cash to illegal immigrants at Home Depot.

7a.1. Don't report your extra income from selling Coke on your taxes. Use it to pay for Spam and Chef Boyardee, then tell the auditor that you starved all year.

8. Airfare is notoriously expensive. Overnight parcel delivery is much cheaper. Next time you really need to go somewhere, try a large FedEx box instead of coach class. Even cheaper is Greyhound’s courier service. The extra bucks just may justify the extra few days in the bus cargo bay. Be sure to also pack Spam, Gatorade, and poop bags.

9. Ailing relatives may request a certain type of memorial service or method of disposing their body. What they don’t mention is that they actually have no sway over you once they’re dead! The cheapest way to dispose of a body is to push it over a hillside. Skipping the funeral entirely can save thousands.

9a. If you choose to hold a funeral, extract the embalming fluid from the corpse of your relative during a viewing. Then change into a salesman's outfit, circle around the building, and knock on the door to the mortuary office. Develop and practice an irresistible pitch, and sell the fluid back to them. Great way to save a few bucks on funeral expenses.

9b. Start making a circuit of all the funerals in all the mortuaries in your city, and repeat the above set of actions.

10. If you’re a person of faith, you’ve probably put a few dollars in the collection basket every week. But the church accepts all worshipers regardless of whether they actually give them any money. Next time the basket comes around, casually pass it to the next person. Smile and suggest that they make up for your lack of a donation.

11. In major metropolitan areas, parking can be a real pain in the arm, and cost one too. If parking costs are really driving you up a wall (ha!), consider moving to the Kenyan island of Lamu, an auto-free society. The per capita income on Lamu is only $6 a year, but the extra time and savings on automobile expenses may just justify your diminished earning potential.

12. Use a Xerox machine to maximize the potential of your existing cash. Such duplicates are sometimes convincing enough to be used in dark restaurants and bars. Wear a fake mustache and a snowmobile suit over jogging attire when you try to spend your Xeroxed bills. If you are detected, quickly exit the establishment, dispose of your mustache and slip out of the snowmobile suit, hail a taxi, ride to the outskirts of town, skip on the fare and jog into the forest.

13. Establish a cache of high-limit credit cards buried in a special place at the outskirts of town. Find your cache, jog back out of the forest, pay your cab fare with a credit card, and order the driver to the airport. Buy a one-way ticket on the next flight to Harare, Zimbabwe. Then buy the entire contents of all the non-commission shops in the international terminal. Then pay to have everything loaded onto your flight as additional luggage. When you arrive in Harare, you will have sufficient capital to start a department store.

14. Once you get on your feet in Harare, seduce a local, marry him or her, obtain a Zimbabwean passport, and never return to the United States.

15. Take out a huge life insurance policy on your new spouse, then chain him or her to a bedpost and force him or her to eat a box of rat poison.

How Several Magazines Would Handle the Topic of Climate Change

The Economist article would be mostly exposition presented with a sense of humour meant to appeal to a conservative British bureaucrat. It would focus on the financial impacts to international corporations of various climate change scenarios. It would be full of wonky policy language and numerical figures, presented skillfully enough to slide it over the threshold of readability. The tone would be that of an Oxford textbook combined with one of Ross Douthat's more recent columns, insofar as it would ooze disgust for the common rabble and their inaccurate concerns about the issue. Alongside the article they'd place a photo of a coal plant belching black smoke into the atmosphere, under which would be a dryly ironic caption, probably a non-sequitur, such as “Coal is expected to deliver up to 86% of global energy demand by 2020.” The headline would also be ironic. The subhead might be a pun. Quotes would be fragmented and presented out of context. Readers would have no idea who wrote the piece, but it would sound the same as all the rest of the articles.

O magazine: even if the lead story was about global warming, the cover would still feature nothing but a portrait of Oprah. The story would be titled something like “Oprah Tackles Climate Change: Are We Doing Enough?” The story would revolve entirely around Oprah's token gestures to reduce flight time in her Leer jet, and her initiative to accomplish something ambitious represented by a tall number. The assumptions regarding climate change would all conform to those that the mainstream press bandies about and upon which everyone already agrees. The article would transparently advocate several unoriginal solutions to global warming, and appeal to sentiments about “the future of our children.” There would be a box about “What You Can Do.” The tips would be things like “Carpool” and “Use Less Styrofoam.” The article's vocabulary would not exceed Flesch–Kincaid grade level 6. Its tone would be chatty and optimistic.

The Nation would feature a lengthy reported essay in which the author would lay out a reasoned critique of everything the US government and America as a whole has ever done in regards to climate change. It would sound like a policy paper combined with Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States. Somehow, the author would tie in a social-justice angle. Over and over he would coolly describe the ways in which greedy capitalists, our obtuse citizenry and compromised politicians have led us to the brink of global doom. He would describe how the marginalized elements of society would be even more vulnerable to the destruction climate change is poised to wrought, and how the rich have insulated themselves from such problems. The rich would come out looking like a cabal of bloodthirsty crooks. All of our attempts to address the problem would be similarly demolished. Many of the sources would be bitter academics left over from the 70s. They would use anachronistic ideological terms like “Trotskyism.” They would blame right-wing administrations of the distant past. The author would present no realistic solutions to the problem, but would suggest that the government spend large amounts of money rectifying it.

Mother Jones would have a strongly-researched expose of wholesale corruption written in an accessible narrative style. The article would be in first-person perspective and start out with an anecdote, and then go on to deliver a blistering volley of indicting facts. The author would illustrate at least ten instances of mind-boggling hypocrisy and bold-faced lying. He would identify specific villains. They would be obscure, influential people, probably business executives. There would be pictures of these people in their natural habitats. The author would indict at least one prominent person that the readers had assumed was alright. The editorial tone would appeal to intelligent, informed, white bourgeois liberals. The layout would be aesthetically pleasing and would include infographics.

The National Review article would be about the dangerous steps liberals are taking in response to global warming. The title would be “Global Warming: The Hidden Agenda.” There would be an obscene cartoon of Al Gore dancing around on the cover. The article would focus entirely on the risks of doing anything to try to curtail global warming. The author would demolish the liberals' suggested approaches to climate change. The tone would be pushy, loud, and full of fear. Money would be the dominant theme. The author would confidently claim that the liberals had already sowed the seeds of their own destruction, and that their downfall was imminent. Most claims would be hyperbolic. The author would be a coal industry lobbyist.

FINIS.