Although bird strikes caused no civilian deaths in America last year, that country's Federal Aviation Administration estimates that they cost its airline industry $385m.The days when people thought that this sort of thing could be stopped with a scarecrow and a few firecrackers are long gone.
Stuntdriver George Cottle went through four Batmobiles during filming of Batman Begins, a retelling of Bruce Wayne's pre-cape capers that sees him do battle with a scarecrow on a fire-breathing horse hell-bent on, as ever, poisoning Gotham's water supply.
Dressed in overalls, stuffed with straw, a scarecrow slumped on a porch swing, its head a forlorn sack knotted at the neck with a red kerchief.
In the grand tradition of emasculated actors like Jeremy Davies and Crispin Glover, Lawther played the role in a full-body cringe, his cheeks pink with shame, like a scarecrow on fire.
There's a crew of joke monkeys in caps with ears, prole accents and plimsolls, and a vulture who staggers around like a scarecrow with a broom handle across his shoulders.
Worzel was a scarecrow with interchangeable heads for specific activities such as thinking, dancing or working.
GE is promoting the smart grid with ads that show a scarecrow singing "If I only had a brain" from "The Wizard of Oz" while bouncing along an old power line.
AT a recent band rehearsal for the forthcoming revival of "Hair" at City Center, the final production in this season's Encores! concert musicals series, Galt MacDermot, the show's composer, a scarecrow with a kind face and a fringe of white hair, and Rob Fisher, the musical director of the series, couldn't stop grinning at each other across twin keyboards.
Case in point: a scarecrow with a meek expression becomes a visual contradiction, as the subject outwardly struggles with a pronounced and "ironic phobia of crows".
Just a little bump of special K, touch of donkey dust, and you've got all the composure of a scarecrow with a bowling ball for a head.
He'd been given a scarecrow makeover, with straw stuffed in his shirt, hoisted on high.
