I’ve had it happen several times, this morning being the most recent, and it got me thinking. I know many, many people who have never had the joy of this experience even once, and I wonder why I have been so fortunate to have had it multiple times. I realize that the probability is directly affected by the amount of time a person spends outside, but I would say I am average in that respect - I work inside all day but I do spend a lot of time walking and running outside on the weekends and stuff.
So I’m wondering, am I also average in the frequency of my head-toilet occurrences? Or am I extra-lucky? Should I buy a lottery ticket? Or a hat? How many times have you been pooped on?
It depends not just on time spent outdoors, but time spent in high roosting or flyover areas. Some of the buildings in my junior high school were roosting places for pidgeons. One lunchtime, one of the caught my right arm from the elbow to the sandwich that I was holding. The startling thing to start with was that it felt hot - or at least much warmer than I would have expected after the drop.
I learned to sit further from the buildings during lunch, even if it was easier to find emply seats closer to the buildings.
I had a buddy in HS who worked in a lobster pound. One day, a family of out-of-staters was eating there, and a seagull shit right on this little girls face.
The mom started getting out her camera, all excited, “Honey, a seagull shit on your face.”
The little girl was crying and the mom was taking pictures.
Back in college a friend of mine and I were walking to class and a bird pooped on his shoulder as we were walking under a tree. He turned his head to see what hit his shoulder and got bird poo all over his chin. I think that was actually funnier than if he had gotten hit on the head!
Yes. Several times. The first time was when I was stationed in Japan. a buddy of mine decided to go to the zoo, and I went along. We were sitting on a bench, looking out over a lake, when a seagull scored a direct hit right on the top of my head. The restroom attendent found this hilarious.
The second time I was stationed at Bremerton, in Washington state. I was walking to the main gate, where I was going to be picked up by my wife. As I approached the gate, I felt a wet slap on the side of my head, then a thud on my shoulder. I looked to my right, and saw a huge pile of avain feces on my shoulder. I mean big, like the size of a softball.
I’m not sure what that bird had to eat that day, but the smell, consistency, and overpowering funk would be TMI even for such a worthy thread as this one.
As I was scooping the refuse off of my raincoat (with tears streaming down my cheeks), I heard a noise behind me. It was a Marine, who’d been sitting in a third story window ledge of the BEQ. He was laughing so hard, he almost fell out of the window. My wife made me roll down the window on the way home. Boy, was that snow cold.
I was strafed as a child, when I was bent over tying my shoe. Oddly enough, this was at a zoo also. I was hit in the small of my back, so I cannot consider this a head shot. Still got shit on, though.
There was an infomercial making the rounds several years ago that was a collection of clips in the America’s Funniest Home Videos vein. One clip was a mom videotaping her bewildered 5-year-old son walking up to her door. His face was covered in bird shit. Honey, what happened? Bird poop on me. Always cracked me up.
Got hit once when sitting outside at a friend’s house. Direct hit on the top of my head.
I went home and washed my hair right away.
Otherwise, I probably got hit a fair bit when we kept budgies (they would sit on my head/shoulders and preen my hair. I just don’t recall any specifics.
Only once, which is impressive considering how much time I spent on the beach in my teens. The Skyrats have impressive accuracy, so I guess I was lucky.
Of course, that one time just happened to be within the first five minutes of talking to a girl I had just met, so it was kind of a “quality over quantity” thing.
No. I did see it land and a person’s head though. I’ve seen the aftermath on a few more persons. It turns from clear to white quickly. I do stand under something when a flock of geese fly over.
NYC Streetlights provide convenient perching for the city’s large population of pigeons. You will often see a line of pigeon shit under them and they are often at street corners where you are likely to stand waiting for the light to change. I was hit twice until I figured it out. :smack:
Several years ago my wife and I were flying to London and we had a stopover of several hours in Boston, so we took a bus downtown to see some of the sights.
While we were at Boston Common we bought some cones of Italian Ices and were strolling along eating them, when a pigeon scored a direct hit on my wife’s cone.
For some reason she decided not to eat the rest of it.
Considering that I have had a high risk of bird poop in my life I haven’t been hit much, only once with wildlife that I can remember. Sure I’ve had pet birds that were sitting on my shoulder poop on me but you expect that to happen.
My high risk comes from growing up in a beach community and spending a lot of time at the beach. Then I volunteered at a bird rehab facility for about a year and I worked at an aviary for several months. I also had a small walk-in aviary of my own with zebra finches and a couple quail. I may have been hit by some tiny finch poo but I never noticed. I may have been pooped on while carrying a few birds at the jobs I’ve had but I never seemed to get hit by a flier. I did sit on the beach once after work and I apparently sat in gull poo. Which I noticed when I visited a bar after and kept smelling seabird shit. I got off my bar stool and saw a smear of poo and realized what happened. I had to go to the bathroom and try and wash it off the back of my pants, fortunately it was a dark bar and there weren’t many people around. Then again that’s probably why no one was sitting near me, seabird poop is quite odoriferous. Working with birds you could tell when the perched birds were about to let fly with something and you developed quick reflexes. You also avoided taking routes that would take you under popular perching areas.
The only time I remember getting a head shot was when I was about 12 and went to a local theme park with some visiting relatives. I put my hand on my head to smooth my hair and there was a wasp in my hair that stung me. I asked my cousin to look and see if the wasp was still in my hair and he said “no, but there’s some bird poop”. So the animal life was out to get me that day. I went to the bathroom to wash the poop out of my hair before going to the first aid station for the sting. That was my first wasp sting, too.
