Medford mail tribune., April 24, 1960, Image 43

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By H. ALLEN SMITH
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Hawaii is indeed a glorious place:
where else could you find
such valiant creatures which
refuse to bow to the will of man?
Here is the outrageous tale told by a master humorist
Everybody in Hawaii knows about the mynah birds and
especially about the mynah birds at the Royal Hawaiian
Hotel in Waikiki. The window of our room overlooks the
automobile entrance to the hotel, and in the center of this
beautiful courtyard is a banyan tree that looks to be almost
as big as the hotel itself. Its branches are inhabited by mynah
birds, several hundred thousand of them, judging from the
noise they make.
For a day or two this is a major nuisance, and a majority
of the travelers who check in at the Royal are soon bellowing
at the management, demanding that something be done about
those jabbering birds. It has been one of the hotel's problems
for years.
From newspaper files and from hotel employees, I have
"assembled the facts concerning the campaign against the
mynah birds which ended in the defeat of Jack Fischbeck,
then manager of the Royal Hawaiian.
The main battleground was the big banyan in the entrance
court. Mr. Fischbeck began by having a dozen hoses strung
into the court and a dozen streams of water turned into the
trees. The mynahs loved it, frolicking in the water and
screaming their delight.
Mr. Fischbeck then tried firecrackers, tying them to the
lower limbs of the banyan and touching them oil all at once ;
tViP mvnahs behaved like children on the Fourth of .Tulv. and
- - - - ar t
some witnesses said they jumped up and down to show their
pleasure. So Mr. Fischbeck had his warriors turn Roman
candles into the tree, and watched with satisfaction as the
birds swarmed out of the foliage and flew across Kalakaua
Avenue like a great black cloud.
"Head for the hills, you dirty dogs!" cried Mr. Fischbeck,
jubilant and triumphant on the entrance steps to the hotel.
Within an hour every mynah was back in the tree, and Mr.
Fischbeck was assembling more Roman candles when someone
told him he might burn down both the tree and the hotel, so
he decided to try other weapons.
Maintenance men spent half a day tying dozens of strong
ropes to the limbs of the banyan, each rope extending down
to the ground. At periodic intervals, for several days, bellboys
and other employees would troop into the court Each man
would take hold of a rope and pull down on it, putting his
whole weight on it, bending the limbs toward the ground.
Then Mr. Fischbeck, again standing on the steps, would cry,
"Fire!" Each man would let go of his rope, all the limbs
would spring upward, and mynah birds would be thrown all
over the landscape. They simply loved it they were like kids
enjoying the rides at Coney Island. The limbs would spring
upward, hurling them into the cerulean sky, and they'd all
come back, chattering and giggling, and take their places for
the next cry of "Fire!" continued
(Excerpted from "Waikiki Beachnik" by H. Allen Smith. Copyright 1960
by H. Allen Smith. Published by Little, Brown and Co., Boston, Mast.)
Family Weekly, April 24, 1 MO