Birds & Tigers

Sunday, bloody sunday...
I live on the fifth floor of a house overlooking a small park on top of one of the terminal moraines that southern Hamburg was built on. It's not flat like the rest of the city. Hamburg is a green city - when you approach Fuhlsbuettel Airport by plane in summer, you have difficulties to see the city at all. It's not like London or Paris where you fly over endless roof lines. We love our parks and gardens, and there are lots of them.
The vicinity of the park implies a great variety of song birds. There are four cats that live in my and the adjacent houses, well-fed and healthy creatures. The supple rests of their meals are subject to constant guerrilla warfare. The songbirds and occasional pigeons lost very early, they don't play any role. The ongoing battle is between blackbirds, madges and crows. Blackbirds tend to come alone, snatch a snack and fly away. Madges come in multiples of two - four or six usually, secure the perimeter, and fight over the rest of the cat's food. Crows come in pairs, chase everybody else away, and feast together.
Seagulls don't touch the food, but scare everybody else away. Seems they're content to have air supremacy...And they're the loudest birds I know.

The Tamil Tigers, I read, admitted that V. Prabhakaran is indeed dead. It is strange how such an unscrupulous person, a murderer with blood up to the elbows, can appear as light-radiating hero in the propaganda of the Tamil diaspora here in Europe... Many still believe he's not dead.
And the legends go on: Bloggers compared V.P. to the "5th Imam", a Shiite messian figure that does not die and will bring final justice to the world. Well, well - that's a queer title for someone who expelled 75,000 muslims from LTTE-territory in 1990..."Ethnic cleansing" it was called. They were allowed to take their clothes and 50 SRLRupees (less than half a USD) each. Their houses were looted and often torn down.
To tell the whole story, "supreme leader" Prabhakaran apologized twelve years later and asked everybody to return. Which about 1,500 muslims did, of the 75,000 expelled...a clear sign of the absence of trust.