Starsky & Hutch

Rick Kughen 2 Comments
Starsky and Hutch

 

I was digging through old photos the other day and I came across this gem. My friends who used to work in the 103rd Street Macmillan Computer Publishing building in Indianapolis will remember Starsky and Hutch, the turkey vultures who nested on the roof of the building and would walk around the tiny 4th-floor ledge.

I had a window office on the north side of the 4th floor and it was common to be sitting there, typing away, and hearing “click-clack-clack-click” sounds coming from the window. I’d look over to see these dudes hanging out, watching me work, maybe hoping that I’d keel over from exhaustion and die.

This was in the days before everyone had digital cameras, and well before we all had cameras in our smartphones, so getting a picture of them wasn’t as easy as it would be today in the era of smartphones. I snapped this picture one afternoon when they were perched outside the office window of a coworker.

When we moved to the current building, I sent the building manager (a man known for, well, not being funny) a very detailed email suggesting that we hire a wildlife relocation team to move Starsky and Hutch to our new building so that we could continue looking after them. I suggested that we capture them and that I be assigned re-acclimation duties…you know, showing them around the new place and stuff.

I never got a response. I get that a lot…being ignored, not responses.

At any rate, with life spans of more than 30 years being possible, I wonder if Starsky and Hutch are still out there, picking apart carrion, and looking after the new tenants of the 103rd Street building? I hope they’re entertaining a new generation of corporate slaves and that the nearby highway still provides them with plenty of tasty opossum meat and so forth.

In a strangely humorous way, I think after circling for years, the vultures finally are getting to feast on my carcass now that my position has been killed. Stuff like that amuses me. 

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And from the Department of Semi-Random, I feel obliged to leave you with this:

 

About Rick Kughen

Rick Kughen is a writer, editor, and fishing bum who lives in Kokomo, Indiana with his lovely wife Charlotte, children Alexa and Eric, a flatulent beagle, two devious cats, his imaginary friend, Ned, and Ned's imaginary dog, Steve. He is a former Executive Editor for Pearson Education in Indianapolis, IN, where he worked for 19 years. He's now a full-time freelance writer and editor; he and Charlotte own and operate The Wordsmithery, a freelance editorial company. In a previous life, he was a newspaper reporter and columnist covering police and criminal courts news. He is a fine graduate of Ball State University where he moonlighted as a student. Kughen is an avid fisherman, writer, fly tyer, bait manufacturer, and baseball card collector. He is a devoted fan of both the Green Bay Packers and Cincinnati Reds, and of course, he is an incurable audiophile. He is the superhero known as Adjective Man (action figures sold separately). Kughen also answers to "Editor Boy," but only because he appears to have no choice.

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2 thoughts on “Starsky & Hutch”

  1. I always wondered if it really was any faster to jump and slide over the hood of the car vs the few extra steps to go around. Easier to draw a gun and shoot the bad guys with those extra steps.

    1. I preferred the “jump and roll over” the hood method, but that’s how I killed my back. New OSHA regs prevent that kind of tomfoolery, and recommend just gettin’ your ass outta the car, and walkin’ around the front (or back). If you can still stand up straight, you may then commence firing.

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