A visitor to a neighborhood learned the hard way why a seemingly ideal parking space was free.
Ursula Maillet, 31, lives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in a neighborhood where rare herons return to breed each year.
“This is the third summer they have come back to the same tree in the neighborhood,” Maillet told Newsweek.
“The community seems to get excited when they show up again in the spring. It’s fun to watch the babies grow and then they all fly away until the next year.”
While getting to watch the rare birds is a treat, they also come with a nuisance—namely, nesting in trees above a parking spot in the neighborhood, with unsuspecting cars getting ruined by their droppings.
“The first year we learned the hard way when my fiancé parked under the tree,” Maillet said.
“He sent me a video in absolute shock when he saw his car. We laughed about it for days and became so invested in who would be parked under it next!”
Now a video showing the inevitable result of parking under the herons’ tree has gone viral, since being posted to Maillet’s TikTok account @ursyyymmm in June.
In the clip, viewed more than 1.5 million times, Maillet showed a sleek black car—almost entirely covered with large bird droppings. The windshield and bonnet in particular have turned white and brown, the black barely visible underneath.
Maillet wrote over the clip: “Every spring we have herons come back to this tree on our block and they DESTROY whatever car is parked under it.
“No one that lives on the block will park here so the spot is always open (sic). Someone coming to the city for the night thinks they got lucky, little do they know they’re about to be the next victim.”
She added: “This is from ONE NIGHT.”
TikTok users were in shock, with one commenter writing: “I would straight up put a sign out there on the tree warning people,” but Maillet replied: “Unless you’ve witnessed it you wouldn’t believe it. People are taking the open spot in the city when they see it.”
Adding to this, another commenter admitted: “If I saw a sign and it was the only spot I would still park there because nothing in my experience would lead me to believe it could ever be this bad.”
One wrote: “You wouldn’t be able to convince me that my enemies hadn’t targeted me. Who are my enemies? Not a clue. But they are clearly enemies.”
And as one put it: “I would just have it towed to the car wash.”
Maillet explained that she believes there are five herons in total in the tree, including three chicks, and identified them as yellow-crowned night herons, a state-endangered species protected under the Game and Wildlife Code.
While not listed as endangered nationally, in Pennsylvania the migratory birds are among the state’s rarest nesting species. The breed is tolerant of human activities, and are known to nest in neighborhoods with a park-like setting, or over roofs or driveways of homes, according to the Pennsylvania Game Commission.
Speaking on the mess done to cars in the neighborhood, Maillet told Newsweek it’s “quite unbelievable when you first see it.”
“I’ve only caught someone going to their car once, as the tree is not out front of my home. They were just standing there in disbelief.”
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