The Great Delaware County, Indiana Starlings War
In the mid-20th century, commissioners from Delaware County, Indiana waged a decades-long war against European starlings over the third Delaware County Courthouse. Every fall and winter, the birds would descend nightly upon the courthouse square to roost by the thousands. Come morning, the courthouse, surrounding square, and any unfortunate vehicles parked along nearby streets were covered in poop, sometimes several inches of it. Commissioners tried everything, but ultimately lost the war.
The Enemy Arrives
Like dandelions and emerald ash borers, European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris), as the name implies, aren’t native to North America. Acclimatization societies first introduced the birds here in the 1870s. Such societies existed to bring European plants and animals into the United States for, in retrospect, fantastically stupid reasons. Hundreds of starlings were released in the U.S. by 1890. The birds became invasive, damaging crops and native ecosystems.
Starlings first appeared locally in 1934. The Muncie Star reported that “several farmers have asked the identity of a short-tailed black bird, with inconspicuous white dots, that is appearing in Delaware County in small flocks. The bird is the English starling, imported to fight insect pests.”
By the end of the Depression, flocks of starlings were roosting across Muncie, covering the uptown district in thick guano. The birds escalated to war on December 14, 1939 when “a large starling flew into circuit court the other day during a jury trial and soared hither and thither around the room much to the amusement of spectators.”
Thousands of its starling comrades were roosting just outside. Commissioners hired Bert Lewis, a local exterminator, to drive the birds away. Each night as they came to roost, Lewis fired Roman candles into the trees and against the courthouse façade, scattering the speckled devils hither and yon. It worked, sort of. The birds indeed left the square, but just congregated elsewhere downtown.
Starlings overran Muncie that winter. The situation was so out of control that firemen at Station #1 just shot them out of the trees. A firefighter later told a reporter, “it was a Saturday night never will forget. We got 345 birds by count…they gave the sycamore a wide berth after that.”
In early 1940, the starlings deployed a tactic usually reserved for malevolent deities: bending time. The clock in the courthouse tower began to chime erratically and displayed the wrong hour randomly that January. The starlings were playing havoc with the clock’s weights as they roosted, while their sticky poo jammed up the gears. A Munsonian by the name of J.S. McCracken climbed the tower and fixed the clock, but the birds returned. Commissioners eventually sealed the tower’s openings with screen.
Battle for Courthouse Square
The starlings mostly dissipated by 1950, but returned enmasse the fall of ’52. An old-timer who habitually visited the square told the Star in mid-November that, “they are thicker on the trees than leaves are during summer.” Resigned to the inevitable campaign, commissioners grudgingly ordered 500 Roman candles for battle.
By December, all three commissioners had been pooped on while walking into the courthouse. On December 2, an enraged Delaware County Board of Commissioners declared war on the starlings and enlisted Sheriff Wilber ‘Pete’ Anthony as their field commander.
Anthony’s first strategy was a bit of cornpone falconry. On December 15, a chicken hawk, clearly sent by Mars, the god of war, came crashing through a courthouse window into the auditor’s office. A custodian captured the hawk after a “brief battle.” Sheriff Anthony named it Hawkshaw and drafted it into service. The sheriff, get this, tied a piece of “stout twine” to the hawk’s leg and began throwing it up into the courthouse trees to, I dunno, scare the starlings? A pissed-off Hawkshaw just flew to the ground. Anthony tried a few times more, but stopped when the hawk “tried to kick me with his left foot.” The first skirmish “ended in defeat for the forces of law and order.”
The fireworks arrived a week before Christmas and with them, Anthony launched (I’m not making any of this up) “Operation Bird” promptly at 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, December 18. The sheriff rechristened his deputies “Anthony’s Raiders” and placed them strategically around the square and in opened second story courthouse windows. The sheriff took a commanding position in the tower.
Around 4:10, flocks of starlings began to descend on Delaware County’s seat of justice, blotting out the setting sun. The sheriff yelled from on high, “this is war, men! Give ’em all you’ve got. It’s them or us and I’ve not many clean clothes left.” Anthony’s Raiders unleashed a blitz of Roman candles. An embedded Star reporter wrote, “balls of fire from the candles would sail into the trees and above the Courthouse,” raining sparkling terror down onto the starlings. The crackle and boom echoed throughout downtown, surreally accompanied by screaming birds and Christmas carols wafting in from Walnut Street. The starlings scattered after a half-hour of fighting. A confident sheriff proclaimed, “you could have walked through the courtyard bareheaded.” But the birds had just retreated strategically. The found haven with holiday shoppers down Walnut.
Monday Night Massacre
The starlings returned to the courthouse nightly in the mid ’50s, despite Anthony’s repeated Patton-esque barrages. Commissioners tried and considered everything from electrifying nooks, to cutting down trees, firing acetylene explosions, spreading poison, dispersing cyanide gas, blasting sound cannons, and shooting blanks. Nothing worked. The starlings always returned.
Out of options in 1957, commissioners tasked Delaware County’s conservation officer, J.A. Planck, to end the starling menace with a shotgun brigade. Shortly after 9:00 p.m. on Monday, November 25, two dozen men began firing birdshot into the trees on the courthouse square. About 1,500 starlings dropped dead. Ever resilient, the feathered survivors regrouped at Federal Park and old Muncie Central.
Such stratagems continued yearly, but ultimately solved nothing. The county paid thousands of dollars annually to clean the nasty mess away. Commissioners began another extermination plan in 1962, but instead of launching fireworks, they sprayed poison. The ground was no longer littered with excrementa in the mornings, but dead starlings.
End of an Era
The courthouse was in trouble by the mid-1960s. Not only was the structure partially dilapidated, but the space proved inadequate for the county’s expanding government. Munsonians complained as local editorials called for a new building.
But it was the starlings that sent the commissioners over the edge. They had strong support from angry residents pressing for solutions. Dozens of op-eds appeared in local papers in the early ’60s decrying the smelly, poo-covered palace of justice. There was an economic factor too: the annual cost to clean the building was enormous and in some places, the crust was literally too hard to shovel. To solve all problems, commissioners announced a new county building and the demolition of the old in 1965.
All these years I thought the ornate, 1886 beaux-arts courthouse was torn down because of limited space, bad taste and crumbling sandstone. These contributed for sure, but in the end, the catalyst for the courthouse’s destruction came from an unwinnable war with nature and a deep layer of shit.
