0:00 In the year 1890, a small village in Greece officially declared war on storks.0:06 Right.0:06 Not on a neighboring town.0:08 Not on a foreign power.0:10 On birds.0:11 It has the same energy as that story from our last episode, with the Austrian army accidentally fighting itself.0:20 Exactly.0:21 It sounds like a piece of folklore, but it happened.0:25 And to understand how truly bizarre this is, you have to understand what the stork meant to ancient Greece.0:34 Oh, it was EVERYTHING.0:35 I mean, this wasn't just some random bird.0:39 To the Greeks, the stork was the absolute model of family values.0:44 The symbol of filial piety.0:46 They had myths about young storks feeding their elderly parents, even plucking their own feathers to keep the old ones warm.0:56 Yeah, and it wasn't just a myth.0:59 It was codified.1:00 There was an actual law in ancient Greece called Pelargonia.1:05 Which comes from pelargos, the Greek word for stork.1:09 Mm-hm.1:10 And the law required adult children to care for their aging parents.1:15 It was literally called "The Stork Law." To them, being a good son or daughter was to act like a stork.1:23 And if you didn't act like a stork?1:26 Well, if you harmed an actual stork, the punishment...1:31 was death.1:32 Death.1:32 For harming a bird.1:34 So that brings us back to 1890.1:36 What on earth happened?1:38 Well, that’s where the story gets both frustrating and, uh, familiar.1:43 The records are thin.1:45 We know a village declared war.1:48 We don't have the specific name of that village, or a detailed account of the battles.1:55 The "battles." I love that.1:57 So what do we have?1:58 Just the declaration itself?2:01 We have the declaration.2:03 And we have the context.2:05 A revered symbol suddenly becomes a public enemy.2:08 We've seen this pattern before, you know?2:12 A wolf is a sacred brother to one tribe, and a livestock-killing menace to a shepherd a valley over.2:20 Right.2:20 The symbol gives way to the reality.2:23 Or at least, the perceived reality.2:26 So the best guess is...2:28 the storks just became a nuisance?2:31 Maybe their population boomed in that one specific area.2:35 That's the theory.2:37 They're big birds.2:38 A lot of them nesting on your roof, in your fields...2:42 I can see how the poetry of filial piety starts to fade.2:47 Uh, maybe they were seen as a threat to crops or property.2:52 So the village just...2:53 snaps.2:54 After centuries of reverence, one generation says "enough." It’s such a human thing to do.3:01 To hold something as sacred until it becomes inconvenient.3:06 It really is.3:07 The sacredness is conditional.3:09 And in 1890, in this one village, the conditions were apparently no longer met.3:16 The war was on.3:17 So how does a war against storks end?3:20 I mean, do the storks surrender?3:23 Do you sign a treaty?3:24 Again, the records are silent on the outcome.3:28 But the fact that storks are still very much present in Greece gives you a clue.3:34 You can't really win a war against a migratory bird.3:39 They just...3:40 leave.3:40 And then they come back next year.3:43 Huh.3:43 It's the ultimate asymmetrical warfare.3:46 The birds don't even know they're fighting.3:50 Exactly.3:50 But what’s really telling is what happened in the century that followed.3:56 The relationship swung back.3:59 Hard.3:59 You mean Poros.4:00 I mean Poros.4:01 A village in northeastern Greece that was named the European Stork Village in 2016.4:08 So they went from declaring war on them to giving them an award.4:13 More than that.4:14 They actively protect them.4:16 The townspeople insulate power lines so the storks don't get electrocuted.4:22 They build and maintain nesting platforms.4:26 They hold festivals to celebrate the birds' return every spring.4:31 Wow.4:31 So the pendulum just swung all the way from reverence, to conflict, and now to...4:38 conservation.4:39 Full circle.4:40 The stork went from being a god, to an enemy, to a protected resident that gets its own festival.4:48 It makes you wonder what revered symbols of today might be declared pests tomorrow.
