There's An Official Term For The Remains Left Behind By Bird Strikes, And You're Going To Hate It

Even with a free upgrade, flying isn't exactly pleasant. Sure, getting more space and better service is less unpleasant than the alternative, but you're still trapped on a tube in the sky with hundreds of other people. So I apologize for the fact that I'm about to share some even less pleasant information with you about flying, but you know the rules. I've seen something, and because of that, you now have to see it, too. And by "it," of course, I mean the official term for the remains left behind by bird strikes. 

Granted, the thought of bird strikes isn't exactly fun on its own, either. Especially since, aside from the ick factor and how sad it is for some random bird to lose its life, you also run the risk of crashing if things go horribly wrong. But we aren't here to talk about that part of bird strikes today. No, we're here to talk about something you probably hadn't even considered existed but now have to know about. Unless you turn back now, before it's too late. 

Because the technical term for the remains left behind from bird strikes is "snarge." Yuck.

Sorry about that. I mean, not really. You're the one who read this headline, voluntarily clicked on it, and then ignored my warning. This is on you more than anything else. But yes, "snarge" is a real term. In fact, it was even the subject of a 2022 article in the New York Times of all places. And as the first paragraph of that article explains, the reason the article exists in the first place is because the author used "snarge" in a previous article without thinking much about it. 

Why the author was surprised at readers' fascination with the term, I can't say. When I googled him, Jason Bittel appears to be a fellow elder millennial who should have known that's exactly the kind of thing the internet would latch onto, but maybe he's so used to using it in regular conversation, he forgot. Or maybe he leads a fulfilling life outside the internet and just doesn't think about things like how the commenters are going to react to his writing. Then again, I just checked, and he's on Bluesky like me, so I think we can dismiss any accusations of Jason not being online enough. 

It also isn't clear where the term "snarge" originated or who first used it, but unlike "skeets," the term "snarge" doesn't appear to have been invented by the internet. As Carla Dove, the program manager for the Smithsonian Institution's Feather Identification Lab, told the NYT, she first heard the term at the museum. Which also leads us to these four delightful sentences:

Snarge can be a wad of a Canada goose lodged inside an airplane engine. Or it can be a broken and burned gull feather littered along the runway. Snarge can even be as small as a rusty-red smear on the nose of an airliner.

But no matter what form it takes, every bit of snarge is different — and all snarge is important.

Of course, if we're studying snarge to identify which species of bird the pilot hit, there has to be a reason for it beyond simple curiosity, right? As much as I would love to live in a world where everyone has the time and the resources to do stuff like that for fun, that's not the current reality. Not in a country where there's no greater value than increasing shareholder value. But if you know which species of bird caused the strike, you can use that information to help prevent future strikes. 

Happy Monday, indeed. Anyway, once they know the species, they can take steps to discourage those birds from hanging out near the airport. After all, you don't usually have to worry about birds at 35,000 feet. It's typically more of a takeoff and landing issue. Get the birds away from the airports, and you eliminate most of the problem:

Management options include capturing and relocating some birds or scaring off others with trained falcons, noise cannons and distress calls. On rare occasions, they turn to lethal measures.

Other strategies include eliminating standing water, removing garbage or food scraps and putting nets over roosting areas.

"Really, we just want to make the airport as uncomfortable to birds as possible," Dr. Dolbeer said.

While birds make up the majority of the snarge that experts study, as the NYT points out, it isn't limited to just birds. It can also include bats, bugs, and even some land animals you wouldn't expect to encounter in the sky, such as "frogs, turtles, snakes, and even cats and rabbits." Why? 

Sometimes a bird of prey will get scared by an approaching airplane and drop whatever it's holding in its talons, which is then sucked into a jet engine. It's also possible that as a bird and an aircraft collide, the contents of the predator's stomach are splattered along with the rest of the bird, and that DNA still shows up in genetic testing, Dr. Dove said.

In the grand scheme of human history, snarge is firmly a modern phenomenon, but it's also almost as old as powered flight itself. The Wright Brothers made history on December 17, 1903, and a little less than two years later, in 1905, Wilbur Wright made history again when he hit a flock of birds near Dayton, Ohio. He survived without serious injury, but even from the beginning, we've known birds and planes were threats to each other. 

However, we didn't enter the modern snarge era until October 4, 1960, when a Lockheed L-188 Electra crashed into the Boston Harbor after takeoff, killing 62 of the 72 passengers and crew members on board. As crash investigators combed through the wreckage, they kept finding what looked like black bird feathers, but they didn't know which bird had caused the crash. To get a little help figuring it out, they contacted Roxie Laybourne, an ornithologist and feather expert at the Smithsonian. After studying what would eventually be referred to as the snarge, Laybourne identified the species as a European starling.

Laybourne soon became the country's authority on snarge, earning her the nickname "the Feather Lady," although, as the NYT put it, "You'd be just as warranted in calling her the Queen of Snarge." Something tells me she's probably preferred the former to the latter, but sadly, she passed away in 2003, so we can't ask her. Thanks to Laybourne's efforts, though, the 1960 Electra crash remains the deadliest plane crash ever caused by a bird strike. It's impossible to say how many lives she saved over the decades, but every time you take off or land safely, there's a good chance you should be thanking Roxie Laybourne, the Queen of Snarge.