The Birds that Collected Coins at a Car Wash-Truth!

The Birds that Collected Coins at a Car Wash-Truth!

Summary of the eRumor: Pictures from a car wash in Frederick, Maryland where it turned out that the suspected thieves of thousands of dollars worth of quarters were actually local birds.


The Truth: A bird website at www.utahbirds.org says it was the first to publish this story and the pictures. The "Bill" referred to in the story is Bill Daugherty president of Magic Carwash Systems in Bristol, Virginia, the company that makes them. He confirms that the story is true although the location of the car wash was not in Frederick, Maryland, but in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and is owned by a man named Bob Ridings. Some versions of the eRumor claim that the car wash lost $4,000 in coins, but Ridings says it wasn't nearly that much. He started showing up for work in the morning to find coins scattered on the ground. He couldn't figure out what was happening until he noticed pieces of grass and straw in the coin return slots and figured it had something to do with birds. He finally used his camera to collect photographic evidence of the thieves. The consensus of the bird experts seems to be that the birds in the pictures are European Starlings. Updated 11/11/09
A real example of the eRumor as it has appeared on the Internet:
Bill owns a company that manufactures and installs car wash systems. (Magic Wand Car Wash Systems, just in case you want to buy one.) Bill's company installed a car wash system in Frederick, Md. Now understand that these are complete systems, including the money changer and money taking machines. The problem started when the new owner complained to Bill that he was losing significant amounts of money from his coin machines each week. He went as far as to accuse Bill's employees of having a key to the boxes and ripping him off. Bill just couldn't believe that his people would do that, so they setup a camera to catch the thief in action. Well, they did catch him on film! That's a bird sitting on the change slot of the machine. The bird had to go down into the machine, and back up inside to get to the money! That's three quarters he has in his beak! Another amazing thing is that it was not just one bird -- there were several working together. Once they identified the thieves, they found over $4000 in quarters on the roof of the car wash and more under a nearby tree. And you thought you heard of everything by now!!! And to think the phrase "bird brain" is associated with being dumb. Not these birds.