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When Shop & Wash Carwash owner Rob Ridings discovered this starling in 1995, it was moving quarters to make room for a nest. |
Back in the day, a bird could run a-fowl of the law and folks might soon forget.
That was before the Internet, where tales of misadventure, even among the avian set, are preserved for eternity.
Such is the case with a starling that experienced 15 minutes of shame a decade ago after it was photographed filching shiny quarters from a car-wash vending machine near Spotsylvania Mall.
Rob Ridings, Spotsylvania resident and owner of Shop & Wash Carwash, said he heard from plenty of people back in May 1995 after he caught the bird mid-theft using his 35 mm Minolta.
A few incriminating pictures appeared in The Free Lance-Star and on the news wires before the flap eventually died down.
But accounts of the ornithological offender's exploits are being circulated anew thanks to the World Wide Web.
Ridings' pictures have recently appeared on everything from a Utah bird-watching site to Snopes.com, which investigated the tale as an urban legend.
"They have just exploded," Ridings said of the pictures' popularity. "It's crazy. People have been calling all year long."
The Internet postings don't mention that Ridings' run-in with the starling occurred 10 years ago.
Ridings, who has owned the car wash for 16 years, said he was taking his son to preschool one morning when he pulled into the Shop & Wash and noticed quarters strewn all over his parking lot.
"I thought someone had hit my vending machines, so I checked the Pepsi machine, but the locks were still on," he said.
Ridings scooped up about $20 in quarters that morning, but remained puzzled.
The next day, he said, he noticed a piece of straw sticking out of the change cup of the car wash's self-service vending machine.
He opened the front of the device and discovered some dandelions and the cellophane wrapper from a package of cigarettes stuffed in there.
It dawned on him that his thief might be of the feathered variety. So Ridings, an animal lover, hatched a plan.
The next morning, he trained his camera on that vending machine and, sure enough, he spotted his culprit.
The starling, apparently in need of a birdhouse, would squeeze into the vending machine through the change chute and pop back out again with a quarter or two in its beak.
After a while, it recruited a few friends to help dispose of the quarters, which it replaced with nesting materials.
"They were working as a gang," Ridings said. "It was just fun to actually see it going on."
Ridings shot about 18 pictures while watching the birds drop quarters onto the rooftops of nearby buildings and into the mulch beds on his property.
Then he plugged up the change chute.
"I put a paper towel in there to discourage her. She pulled that out," he said. "So I put some black electrical tape across there. The next morning, she pecked through that.
"Then I stuffed a cloth towel up in there," he said. "She couldn't pull that out. That was the last I saw of her."
Ridings said he isn't sure how much money the plumaged pillager managed to abscond with. But he figures he's made it up by selling photos of the bird to the National Wildlife Federation's Ranger Rick magazine and National Geographic Kids magazine.
He's amused by those who claim the photos are doctored. Some visitors to UtahBirds.org, where the story appeared a few years ago, have literally picked the pictures apart pixel by pixel. Ridings, however, still has the negatives.
Mostly, Ridings said, it's been fun to hear people talking about the bird again.
"It's been really cool. The Internet kicked in," he said. "I'm famous for something, anyway."
To reach EDIE GROSS:
Email: egross@freelancestar.com
