I can hardley believe it happend

[Morry Stillwell]

At the US Figure Skating Northwest Regional Championships today the event came to a halt because of birds. There were bird in the arena that were flying down to the ice surface for water. This spooked some low level skaters. The question was what to do. After considerable delay the following took place. The zambonie door was opened, the lights were turned off. This was in hope that the birds would fly to the light outside. It did not work. I do not know where he cam from but a man in the area said he had bagpipes and that birds did not like bagpipe (I agee with the birds). He fired up the pipes and one bird flew out and the other seemed to hide for the rest of the day.

At times I think I have seen it all in skating. A new one for sure

[jlai]

[Sylvia]

Will this incident be shown on IceNetwork during their NWP Regionals on-demand video coverage?

[Ozzisk8tr]

How funny. One time while training roller skaters at venue, a model aircraft club had booked the venue after us. Their planes were flying around the venue above the skaters heads for the last 10 minutes of our skating session. I thought it would make a brilliant event. Figure skating while avoiding dive bombers. I don't think it would really take off though. Man I would pay to see that though. Hilare.

[IceAlisa]

Memarees of the pigeon and .

[shan]

for the skaters...

for entertaining us...

[Really]

Oh, my...

[misskarne]

I can hardly believe it's taken this long for something like this TO happen...

Granted, our rink is a hole, but we've had birds get in before. One got trapped a few weeks ago and crapped all over the ice in its panic

[gypsy_82]

We used to have a nest of birds in our rink one winter. I was fun, sometimes, to watch them fly across the rink. They never came down to ice level though.

Then this spring we had another bird that was flying around and landing on the ice. The bird finally left when the workers started going after it with a net.

[Ziggy]

Nothing will ever beat the ice rink in Cracow, Poland where before it was refurbished, you had dogs chasing cats and one time a dog peed on the ice, by the barrier. The ice would not freeze there and they had to go there with a pick axe to chop a huge block off.

One time, during a competition there, a skater was doing a spiral and a bird's nest fell down right in front of her.

[l'etoile]

Holy cr*p! It's so funny and weird and scary

[barbk]

That's the win for the weirdness this season so far.

[merrywidow]

My laugh for the day. Thanks Morry & others.

[beepbeep]

On the US Roller figure skating championships in 2009, a bat flew in the arena and the whole competition was stooped. Then it was time to try to get it out: loud music, lights on . It eventually flew away to where it came from.

The whole thing was being streamed live and the bat was even given a name on Skaters Newsflash (Bill, the Bat)

[suki]

Thanks for the laugh this morning, Morry. But I have to ask: Why did a man in the stands just happen to have bagpipes with him, of all things?

[Debbie S]

Will this incident be shown on IceNetwork during their NWP Regionals on-demand video coverage?

Maybe not if it was during a low-level (non-qual?) event. But it would sure make things interesting. Well, not that the skating wasn't already interesting, but....

[n*ice mom]

We have found out on the couple of occasions that a bird has flown in our front door that the way to catch them is to get them in a small room, close the door and turn off the lights. They will stay perfectly still in the dark and you can grab them or throw a towel over them. With the lights on, they will get away everytime before you can grab them. Of course, we don't have arena height ceilings in our home.

[TheGirlCanSkate]

I understand how birds got in, I'm just surprised some people don't leave home with bagpipes!

[babbyrabbit]

This happened once at a rink we were at during group lessons. They shut the lights off as well and opened zam doors. And Mr. Birdie did go bye bye!

[shan]

the bagpipe part is what makes me