Thinking Outside the Bird Box

From the Carlisle Sentinel
Opinion: An idea that's for the birds

By Rich Lewis, Sentinel Columnist, March 18, 2010


Imagine a 24-foot-high wooden monument rising just off one of Carlisle’s main streets intended to commemorate a long-time relationship, preserve a bit of history and celebrate the virtues of recycling.

Think that idea is for the birds?

Well, actually, you’d be right — because that’s part of it, too.

In fact, it’s going to be named the “Curtilage Birdhouse,” and it will soon be up on the Dickinson College campus.

Now, as a backyard bird-fancier myself, I must say that when I first heard about it, I was totally charmed by the idea of a gigantic birdhouse gracing the local landscape. So I called college President Bill Durden to ask who thought this up.

“You’re talking to him,” he replied.

Durden and some other college officials were on a tour of the new Lewis Katz Hall at the Penn State Dickinson School of Law, down the street from the college, when he spotted on the ground the huge cupola that used to sit atop the Levinson Curtilage, the law school dorm demolished to make way for the new building.

The law school people said they didn’t know what they were going to do with it, so Durden pulled aside Ken Shultes, the college’s head of campus operations, and said, “Why don’t you just ask them if we can have it.”

Shultes did, and, “They said, sure, take it.”

Now, I collect junk. I’ve got a basement and barn full of it. But I’m not sure even I would be tempted by a 3,500-pound steeple made of rotting, water-stained wood and shedding old paint like dandruff. What in the world did Durden plan to do with this white elephant?

“A birdhouse,” he replied. “That emerged immediately in my head.”

The Levinson Curtilage and its crowning cupola were built in 1953 and, as Durden explained, “It’s not a piece of art. It’s actually a little building. It was just, well, I said to myself, ‘That’s a birdhouse.’”

See what a lifetime in academia will do to you? It makes you.... ummm.... think creatively.

Curtilage, by the way, is an old British term for an enclosed area outside a dwelling. That’s also what a lifetime in academia will do to you — make you look things up.

Durden’s vision had elements beyond chickadees and sparrows. Although the two schools have never had a formal relationship, many of the college’s graduates went on to study at the law school. So, Durden says, “I got the wild idea of dedicating this birdhouse to the generations of dual degree holders from both the college and the law school.”

He’s been planning a fall dedication ceremony with federal judge John Jones, who gained national attention presiding over the “intelligent design” trial in the Dover School District — and who happens to be one of those dual-degree holders.

Durden also sees the structure as expressing “the continuity of history,” and illustrating “how you can have a bit of fun with recycling things.” Add in the birds and, “It’s all part of our environmental movement.”

Of course, the guy at the top gets paid to come up with the big ideas — but it’s the guy below who has to figure out how to implement them.

In this case, that’s Shultes.

First, he had to hire a crane to move the cupola to the college’s facilities building. Next he’ll set a crew to work fixing it up.

“We have extremely skilled in-house craftsmen. They’ll repair it, paint it and then we’ll prep the site,” he says.

The site is a rocky field near Morgan Hall, a Dickinson dorm, right off High Street.

I asked Shultes exactly how a cupola is turned into a birdhouse.

“That is an excellent question,” he replied. “Put some perches on it and some bird food, I guess.”

I wondered if Shultes was worried if the occasionally exuberant Dickinson students might develop other plans for the structure, which looks eminently climbable and sports a copper dome topped with a pointy spike. He said no, that his biggest concern is another large group of campus residents: “We have to find a way to invite the birds in and keep the squirrels out.”

Transforming a massive roof ornament into a birdhouse isn’t your typical maintenance project, and I asked Shultes where it ranks among the unusual things he’s been asked to do over the years.

“Oh man, it ranks right at the top,” he said. “Probably only Bruce the Shark came close.”

Bruce is a huge fiberglass shark that lives in the pond outside the college’s gym. At least it doesn’t need to be fed.

As for Durden, he says the birdhouse “ranks right up there” with his best brainstorms. “I’m truly proud of this. I like these spontaneous ideas.”

Besides, he says, “I like birds. As a kid, I raised chickens. And I had ducks for pets.”

Thank goodness it wasn’t goats and alligators.

But I love this idea. Some guy in Louisiana once claimed to be in the Guinness World Records for having the world’s largest birdhouse.

It was 8 feet tall and weighed 1,000 pounds.

Pish. You want to see a really big birdhouse — come to Carlisle, Pa.