‘The Birds’ comes to the Palisades

Here’s one threat that Homeland Security hasn’t prepared for: dive-bombing birds.

The critters have pecked several pedestrians in Pacific Palisades, reported the Palisadian-Post, which landed an exclusive because its managing editor, Bill Bruns, was one of the victims.

Bruns later told me he was walking to work on Swarthmore Avenue when “suddenly I felt bird feet tangled in my hair.... We had been hearing about this bird but I was preoccupied and not thinking about being attacked. I shook my head and the bird flew up and away.”

He identified the culprit as a mockingbird.

The next day he walked to work on the other side of Swarthmore -- you can’t be too safe in the Palisades -- when “I was attacked by two blackbirds. They didn’t land on my head, but pecked at me and then flew up to the overhanging eaves and made a commotion.”

Odd, but I also recall instances of birds zeroing in on the heads of older men in Long Beach and Santa Monica in previous years.

The attacks in the Palisades seemed to be a case of “a mommy protecting her nest,” a pet hospital worker told the Post’s Sue Pascoe. Once the eggs are hatched, the worker said, the danger will be over.

Well, for now I’m avoiding the Palisades because I’m not sure I could convince the avian population that I’m no threat -- my doctor forbids me to eat eggs.

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Unclear on the concept: Jesse Snyder chanced upon a “No Motor Vehicles” sign in Bakersfield that was evidently intended for amphibious vehicles (see photo).

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Unclear on the concept (II): Brian Monahan of Venice noticed that the model in a beard- and mustache-trimmer ad didn’t seem to need either (see photo).

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Spell-check disaster No. 3,425,681: Bart Boydston spotted an ad that was supposed to say “sous” chef but instead came out looking as though the restaurant was looking for a cook who specialized in Native American cuisine (see accompanying).

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Palm attitudes: L.A.’s palm trees continue to inspire writers. “Snakeskin Shamisen,” Naomi Hirahara’s entertaining mystery about a 70-ish Japanese gardener who solves crimes, likens the leafy icons to “giant frilled toothpicks stuck into a meaty mound of L.A. earth.”

With their ungainly frames, palms don’t draw much respect. The late Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko dismissed them as “utility poles with feathers.” In “White Butterfly,” novelist Walter Mosley said they were “like impossibly tall and skinny girls ... their hair a mess, their posture stooped.”

Most curious of all was a John Updike poem that saw them as “isolate, like psychopaths ... beneath the adobe band of smog across the sky.” I don’t consider the trees psychopaths, but I have been skulled by a few suspect fronds in my time.

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miscelLAny: USC’s Trojan Family magazine notes that an 1880 newspaper article about the founding of the school said: “An immense throng gathered on Wesley Avenue, West Los Angeles” for the laying of the cornerstone.

Yes, the newspaper said “West Los Angeles” and it didn’t have to print a retraction. USC’s home was considered the west side of L.A. in 1880 even though there were no cellphone-wielding motorists in the area.

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, Ext. 77083; by fax at (213) 237-4712; by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A. 90012; and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.