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For some time one of our more promising projects here at the Institute has been in the field of Thermodynamics as Applied to Migrating Species as a Method of Determining Geospatial Locations and Direction. Or in other words “How do birds like the Sandhill crane know where they are and how they got there as well as where they’re going and how they’re going to get back”. I know right, That’s a big hairy question.

As you know we send out researchers to all parts of the globe to study thorny problems like these. Most of them have had some training in the field that they’re working in, especially the PhD’s, and those that we can trust to come back, are provided with all the necessary equipment and materials to do a bang up job. To ensure they do we hold back their per diem until we get results and as they get hungry we usually have an immediate inflow of data. It’s been found through trial and error that not feeding them until the uplink starts working, regularly gets more uniform results. Send us data, we send you a Hostess Ho-Ho. That’s our deal.

What about the quality of the data you might ask, well go ahead ask, it had better be good that’s all we say, the data, I mean. We have a dialup connection to the internet where we can cross check this information, so they better not try any funny stuff. The internet is pretty darn powerful and full of information, sometimes I wonder why we even bother sending some of these people out on these jobs, but we’ve found that dialup is so slow that many times we can send someone to Dubai for instance, and get the data back by UPS faster than we can over our dialup connection. Our ISP has told us that there is something new on the horizon called DSL that will work really, really fast and if we get caught up on our bill and stay current for 36 months they will install it here at the Institute. Then those guys better watch out.

The initial data we have received is promising if not electrifying.  Our researchers tell us that on some of the more remarkable birds they have found a direct connection to the Sandhills cranes ability to get somewhere and our project. It appears that some of the more mature cranes have primary feathers that are actually IFR sensors that are hard-wired directly into their bird brains and that as soon as their wing tips are struck by the early morning rays of the sun, their primary feathers turn golden with the heat of a non-sensical bio-directional whammy, chock full of data, and they get all the information they need to get wherever they are going.

It’s an instant download, apparently from one of those super-secret spy satellites that we used to use to spy on Cuba, that gives them real-time information on wind-speed, barometric pressure, GPS coordinates, maps, updates on how successful the NRA has been in expanding Sandhill Crane hunting seasons, a currency converter, what kind of harvest they had in the Ukraine, a universal translator so they can talk to cranes from any country, etc. Anything and everything they need to know in a nano-second. If you have ever seen one of these cranes falter as they begin their ascent, or gone all over wonky of a sudden, that was exactly when the download hit. The feathers light up, their little bird brains go all Jesus Christo and it’s done. They got it. The reason all cranes do not have this ability is due to the fact that it takes a mature, reasonable, old brain to receive this mega load of info and that means a mature stable adult.

Of course any theory this important must be tested to make sure our researchers aren’t making this crap up, and test it we did. Since one of our researchers here at the Institute is a fallen away NSA techie and knew all the frequencies that those old Cuba spy satellites used, we were able to reprogram his remote that he uses to fly his new HydroSpiff drone and take over control of some of the Sandhill cranes leaders and make them do all kinds of goofy stuff.

He made them fly straight down the highway about 8 feet off the ground to see how many Winnebago’s he could put in the ditch. He’d take the flock up to about 800′ and make them spell out dirty words. But the kicker that nearly got the entire program shut down was when he had them occupy the drive thru at the Socorro McDonald’s so no one could order. Man you do not mess with the franchises  during peak periods. Those guys know people. They had the FCC down there so fast we barely had time to hide the gear and say “No we don’t know nothing about that”.

So far the research looks promising, it’s not done yet but we’re saying there’s a paper in here, and we’re going to publish. Nature, Scientific American, Ham Operators Gazette, Huffington Post, we don’t care. We publish, we get paid. Remember it’s the Institute bringing you the information the others won’t print. So watch for it at a newsstand near you.