The Bird Man Comes to Mount Vernon, N.Y.

 

Otto Standke, 1920s

In March of 1888, Otto Standke made his entrance at the family farm in eastern Missouri, the sixth of seven children.

They all grew up in a white cottage surrounded by eighty acres of orchards and vineyards. The family’s great sorrow was that their father lost his hand and part of an arm in a terrible accident. Thereafter he relied on his wife to manage the farm work.

Caroline and William Standke were German immigrants who arrived in the U.S. around 1870. They met and married in Ohio—secretly, to avoid a “charivari”—and rode off in a spring wagon to start their life together in Missouri.*

Among their children, a few married and others moved to Atlanta, Toledo, and Little Rock. Otto stayed nearby. 

He was interested in new mechanical devices, such as the gramophone, and games like puzzles and magic tricks. A natural salesman, he got a job behind the counter at the Montgomery Ward store in Kansas City.

On the side, Otto made money in landscaping and raising chickens. He was also busy inventing machines and securing patents, he said, although there is no record that he ever received a patent.

During the 1930s he moved to Great Bend in central Kansas, where he soon became superintendent of parks with special responsibility for maintaining the grounds of the Barton County Courthouse.

There was a curse on this courthouse.  

Through the summer and into late fall, Otto raked, mowed, and trimmed to perfection. And every morning the lawn, benches, shrubs, statues, bandshell, and playground were coated in the white droppings of starlings.

 

"Super Glossy Starling" from
The New Natural History by Richard Lydekker
(1901)

It was an infestation. As dusk approached each afternoon, thousands of starlings swooped into town, flew to the square, and roosted in the trees until dawn. 

When the dirty, noisy birds first arrived in 1924, Great Bend vowed to get rid of them. Over the years, nothing worked.

But now that World War II had been won and the atomic age begun, Otto stepped forward with a secret plan.

And sure enough, Otto rid Great Bend of its starlings. He worked at night and no one knew exactly how he did it. “It’s a military secret,” he told reporters just before Wichita hired him to evict the starlings that roosted on its department stores.

By this time, Otto carried his equipment in a large double-locked metal box and dubbed himself “the world famed only successful starling chaser.” Moving on from Wichita, he banished the starlings from the federal building in Indianapolis. Louisville and Youngstown also requested his help.

Then, in 1958, he was called east.

Mount Vernon, N.Y., a 30-minute train ride north of New York City, had been plagued by starlings and grackles since 1924. But its problem was not confined to a few buildings or a park; the birds roosted citywide, although they did have a few favorite neighborhoods.

“Active warfare” is how Mayor William D. McQueston described battling the birds, estimated at 10,000 annually, during the late 1920s. The New York Times reported:

 

Last year policemen were placed on duty armed with riot guns with which they peppered the trees sheltering the birds. The fire department was called upon to use the high pressure system and sweep the trees free from the nests, and roman candles were used, the fiery balls temporarily scaring the birds from their nests.

Mount Vernon policemen shooting
at grackles, 1950s.

One of the streets most affected by the infestations was home to a man born in Mount Vernon in 1920. Dr. Perlman of Commonwealth Avenue probably remembered the starlings and grackles from his childhood. 

He must have read about Otto Standke in the newspaper and wrote to Mayor Joseph Vaccarella, urging him to hire the birdman. The mayor agreed. 

By now it was August 1959 and Mount Vernon’s trees cast deep, indispensable shade, rustling with birds or an imminent thunderstorm.

Soon Otto arrived. Wearing a red plaid cap and chomping on a stogie, he climbed out of a cab with his suitcase and mysterious metal box. He ran up the steps to the Hotel Hartley. He was a brisk 71 years old.

 

Hotel Hartley in better days. 

The next day, greeted by the mayor, the health commissioner, and the public works commissioner, Otto signed a five-page $4,000 contract that stipulated staggered payments based on results.

He started at twilight on Commonwealth Avenue.

Surrounded by children in pajamas and adults carrying umbrellas, Otto had no choice but to reveal what he carried in his box: two metal flappers six inches wide and two feet long and a shiny metal chime, also two feet long, which he wore around his neck.

He put the flappers on his hands and set forth, clapping and clanging. Everyone followed along talking and laughing. After a while, the birds flew away.

Alas, things didn’t work out for Mount Vernon and Otto. The city gave him a week to get rid of all the birds. After six twilight treatments, they were as profuse as ever. And Otto complained that only starlings, not grackles, responded to his equipment.

Both parties agreed to revise the contract and more treatments ensued. Two weeks later, the birds remained in Mount Vernon along with Otto, who spent his time arguing with city officials and conducting telephone interviews with reporters. 

EFFORT TO RID CITY OF BIRDS TOTAL FAILURE ran the headline in the Mount Vernon Daily Argus.

In mid-September, after the mayor announced that the city would not honor the contract, Otto departed. He had new jobs, he said, in Philadelphia and Cleveland.

Still hoping to get paid, Otto sent a few friendly postcards to Mount Vernon officials. That’s how they learned that ABC television producers had proposed to fly Otto out to Hollywood.

“If Otto had not come to Mount Vernon and got all that publicity about his little box and its mysterious contents,” a city commissioner remarked, “he probably never would’ve made television.”

Now let’s see. It can’t be just because he was a Kansas man!

Perhaps it’s because of his promises and bluster, his craving for importance.

Somehow Otto had the whiff of the Wizard of Oz.

 

 

 

 

*A charivari is a mock serenade to celebrate a wedding.

 

Through the Hourglass: The Bird Man Comes to Mount Vernon, N.Y.