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Frightening alternatives
Imagine you're a wood pigeon. Heaven for you is a nice big field full of rape seedlings. You, and a hundred others, descend and get stuck in. Advancing like a great, grey carpet, you potter over the figure it rears up before you with outstretched arms. From somewhere in its bright orange midriff a siren screams. The figure rocks and shudders as if in apoplectic rage. It's Scarey Man! All around wings clap frantically as you and your friends fling themselves into the sky, desperate to flee this nightmare vision, this Mr. Blobby on Elm Street. Within seconds, the field is clear, Scarey Man falls silent, and sinks back to the ground, his job done. But this isn't his last word. He will repeat the performance with unflagging gusto every 20 minutes. On into the darkness he will work, adding a glaring light to his repertoire of terror, and scattering sundry deer, rabbits and badgers. Scarey Man's needs are few, a fan to inflate his plastic body, a car battery to power the fan and a timer to switch it on and off. Born in 1984, he is still one of the most effective birdscarers ever invented. Thousands of his clones stand guard in fields as far apart as Sweden and Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Tasmania, Canada and Kuwait. Scarey Man is the brainchild of Brian Barratt, a Cambridgeshire farmer and agricultural supplier. He developed a colleague's flash of inspiration (triggered by the sight of a black bin bag blown up by a gust of wind) into a steady little earner that is highly valued by arable farmers. Can you imagine a better way of inducing avian terror? Daily Telegraph 21 March 1998 |
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