Red-winged blackbird attack wounds bike rider

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By Bill Wundram | Thursday, July 24, 2008 11:22 PM CDT | () comments

Red-winged blackbirds can fiercely attack humans by making screeching dive-bombing swoops.

Dr. Dave Juehring knows. Dave, of Davenport, is just out of the hospital after an attack by a red-winged blackbird. He was seriously injured while biking on Territorial Road in Scott County.

“The birds were bad that day, darting and diving at us. I was hunched down, looked up and saw the claws of a blackbird a foot from my face, aimed right at my eyes. I fell, a bad fall,” he says.

“It smashed my helmet; thankfully I was wearing a helmet. It kept me alive.”

He sprawled out on the road, between Argo and Cody School. His shoulder was badly injured and will require surgery. He had a concussion. Several ribs were broken. A lung was bruised.

Along came a motorist. In the manner of a devoted biker, Dave first said, “Load my bike.” Then, he remembers saying, “Now, take me to the hospital.”

His wife, Michelle, had been biking at his side for a spell but had taken on another route, so he was alone. “But angels were watching over him that day,” she says.

All of this had some unusual circumstances.

“There I was, director of rehabilitation and sports injuries at Palmer College of Chiropractic, and ending up with what could be called a sports injury,” he says.

Coincidence: The driver who stopped was Don Pruder, the husband of Vickie Palmer, of the Palmer family, and secretary of the board of Palmer College Foundation.

Red-winged blackbirds are aggressive this time of year because many are in their second brood, nesting along country roads.

Dave Juehring had been traveling near Argo, a hamlet on the RAGBRAI cross-Iowa run Saturday. How will the blackbirds handle those thousands of bicyclists?

Always Bix, even in an old best-seller

Clarence Darrow of Rock Island, the retired Illinois court judge, was reading an oldie, John O’Hara’s bestseller, “The Horse Knows The Way.” Nobody could write like O’Hara.

Darrow almost fell out of the hammock to read repeated references to Bix Beiderbecke. A pianist named Buddy is noodling on the keys and speaking:

“I’ll do it the way Hoagy did it, but he had a band behind him. I think Beiderbecke was in that band … Then, I’ll do ‘In a Mist’ for you.”

“In a Mist” is a Bix composition.

Darrow did some research. “O’Hara must have been a big Bix fan, even named a short story, ‘In the Mist.’ ”

One more for the road

A city slicker drives off a country lane in Minnesota and his car gets stuck in a ditch.

He sees Farmer Sven and his workhorse out in the field and asks for help. Sven hitches the horse up to the car and yells, “Pull dere, Molly.” The horse doesn’t move an inch. Then he yells, “Pull dere, Buddy.” The horse barely stirs. Then he yells, “Pull, Dixie.” The horse doesn’t budge.

Then, the farmer yells out, “Pull dere, Duke,” and the horse steps right up in the harness and pulls the car easily out of the ditch.

The slicker asks, “Couldn’t you remember the name of your own horse?” The farmer smiles, “Vell, Duke is blind, and I didn’t vant him to tink dat he vould have to do all dat pullin’ on his own.”

Bill Wundram can be contacted at (563) 383-2249 or bwundram@qctimes.com.