I was up at Gladstone Park shops a little while ago and as I came out I could hear a multitude of crows in the trees around (I couldn't see any of them; there were none flying around or visible in the trees, but they were very audible). My first thought was, 'there are tons of crows here today' and my second thought was, 'how weird would it be if this was your first ever day in Australia and you came to the shopping centre and there was this cacophony outside but you couldn't see anything.' Anyway when I got home I had a bit of a think about what 'tons of crows' might really constitute. I have no aptitude for measurement even at guesstimate level, I have always assumed this came from being on the cusp of the crossover in educating primary school children into metric from imperial (1973) so we were told to wipe all knowledge of imperial from our memories (I had no problem doing that, though I do know from Jake the Peg that three feet make a yard, I'll never forget that)
and then gain new aptitudes in a new system, which was beyond me entirely and has been to this day. I fell through the gap.
So I just went online, and discovered using a garden bird site that a crow probably weighs around 650 grams and through that strange french real estate site that 650 Gram(s) = 0.0006397342 UK Long Ton, though this pushed the limits of my enquiring Saturday morning mind and I stopped bothering about what a Long Ton might be as opposed to just a ton. So does this mean that there would have to be three and a quarter million crows to make up one ton (or Long Ton) and therefore about seven and a half million to make two tons (i.e. the lowest number possible for there to be 'tons of crows'?) Surely not. Something is wrong with that calculation, and the weak link is probably my failed maths at high school style competency.
It doesn't matter anyway. There were a lot of crows, I doubt tons. In this country anyway it's illegal to work in imperial measurement. Tonnes of crows might be alright. I like the bit in that Jake the Peg clip where he forgets the words. I suppose Jake the Peg is a classic example of works on a child's and adults' level, since children just think how cool to have three legs, and adults think 'two penises.'
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2 comments:
only one pen1s and one dickhead.
the collective noun for crows is a murder so maybe a massive number of them is a genocide of crows?
and they are NOTHING in the face of 150 cockies flying over en masse and shreiking all the way.
nothing I tell you.
Try a Bonnie doon weekend with 400 cockies at 4am shreiking in one tree. "hear the serenity" - NOT.
Hitchcock's Birds film could have been much scarier if he had paid attention Down Under.
I loved Jake The Peg as a young child too. The "two penis" thing had never occurred to me until your post.
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