Science: The Battle of Midway

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The goony bird, a type of albatross, is an odd and charming creature which serves no useful purpose at all. It spends most of its life at sea and subsists entirely on a diet of fish—a fact which makes goonyburgers much too fishy for some human taste. Sailors gave it its name, because it is such a goony bird. One of the largest of all sea birds, it develops a wingspread of 7 ft.* It is capable of flying for many hours without resting. Like an airplane, it runs to get up flying speed, takes off into the wind, retracts its landing gear when airborne, lands into the wind and needs a long run to reduce speed.

By all odds the favorite airport of the goony birds is Midway Island. In 1922, some 9,000 goonies were counted; in 1946 there were 214,000. Nobody has taken a census recently, but there are an awful lot of goony birds on Midway. This has caused trouble because the U.S. Navy is also trying to use the flying facilities.

At the Navy air base, the goonies love to perch on the wings of aircraft—whether parked, landing or taking off. At times, they make Kamikaze dives at planes and manage to get sucked into propellers. This year, ten planes have been wrecked (no human casualties) by goony-bird action on Midway. With the advent of jet aircraft, the problem has become acute: a goony vacuumed into a forward induction vent could cause a jet to explode.

Last week the Department of Defense took official cognizance of the goony-bird problem, sent off a protest to the Fish & Wildlife Service. This week, as the November mating season drew near, Fish & Wildlife's Dr. Philip DuMont prepared to leave for Midway with plans for a three-phase attack. First, he will attempt a kind of planned parenthood, stealing and smashing goony eggs around the main airstrip. If this fails to discourage the goonies,* DuMont will try to make other, harmless parts of the atoll more alluring to goony birds, sprucing up the foliage, sanding over old runways and creating a veritable goony La Guardia Field. If all else fails, DuMont will introduce ultra-high frequency noises to drive the goonies to madness or to less sonic surroundings.

Whatever stratagem DuMont adopts, he will not resort to simple slaughter. The goony birds are protected by the Interior Department because—except at Midway—they are rare specimens of wildlife. And besides, as any mariner knows, it's bad luck to kill an albatross.