Qi Vortex

Austin has a large population of Great-Tailed Grackles.  When a colony comes home to roost it's one hell of an experience.



My freshman year of college I went on a date with a guy who, while seeming perfectly normal if a bit pretentious (to be fair, so was I.  Philosophy undergrad will do that to you.) when I first met him, turned out to be benignly nutty.

Apparently a small-ish colony of grackles called the trees next to the ice cream shop we went to home and while we were there started coming in for the evening.  As they were screaming and swooping and chattering to each other my date starts going on this amazing tirade about how much he hates grackles.  Not the usual complaints of 'they're loud,' or 'they poop a lot on my car,' or 'they drive off the smaller birds,' but about how they were just energy draining.  Being around grackles made this guy exhausted.

Then he said what were perhaps the greatest words I'd thus far heard in my life:

Grackles.  They're, like, Qi vortexes, draining my life force.

Shortly after I had to call it quits and went home.  Because really.  I learned a valuable lesson though.  Never pick up guys in the wee hours at the all night diner.