Sometimes on a cruise ship, you might see something unexpected: Maybe a lizard stowed away on board and found its way to the pool deck.
It's not uncommon for a real bird to find its way to Central Park on a Royal Caribbean Oasis-Class ship and not leave before the ship gets too far for it to fly home. Similar things happen on all cruise lines and crews are trained to quietly handle those situations.
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A single bird or even a stowaway cat, duck or other small animal might create an amusing situation. Hurricane Milton, however, put multiple Carnival ships in a full-on horror-movie situation, which Carnival Brand Ambassador John Heald wrote about on his Facebook page.
"Last week was all about Milton and one of the subplots to this tragedy was the stories of birds. Yep, birds," he wrote.
"We had a chap on the Carnival Valor who had a dead bird land on his head while he enjoyed a Guy’s Burger on Lido. The guest, not the bird. Then other ships had the sad sight of birds migrating and unable to fly through the gathering storm crash landing on Lido."
A single dead bird falls somewhere between disturbing and amusing, but birds crash landing on the pool deck starts to evoke horror movies. It was bad and it got worse.
Image source: Pixabay
Carnival ships bombarded by birds
Birds can fly only so far, so a storm like Hurricane Milton can push them past the point of no return. That can leave them looking for any safe place to land.
Heald got a message from "P," describing what it was like on Carnival Valor during the bird invasion.
"On the Valor. Dead birds everywhere across the decking. Look at this John. Why has it taken so long to clear them? Has Carnival not heard of bird flu? This is more dangerous than Covid," P shared.
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The passenger continued to scold the cruise line for its handling of the dead-bird situation.
"I do not understand the lack of concern. It would be interesting to know if Carnival has made a plan if for when this happens. No one wants starving birds or worse dead birds on the ship," P added.
"I hope the birds are removed without harming them or killing them. Why is this allowed to happen it seems only on Carnival Cruise Line ships?"
Carnival, of course, does have a plan for handling this unlikely event.
"The facts are that the dead birds are collected and disposed of in accordance with United States Public Health," Heald wrote.
"The ones that live will be cared for by the crew as best they can before they fly off once the storm has passed (that’s the birds, not the crew). Anyway, let us all hope the birds can continue their migration and do not need to land on our ships anytime soon."
Carnival has a plan for everything
Heald spent decades as a cruise director before becoming brand ambassador, and he has seen this nightmare scenario before.
"This, of course, was very sad. I have seen this firsthand when I was a Cruise Director," he said. "The Lido looked like a scene from an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Oh for the millennials and Generation Ripped Jeans. Alfred Hitchcock was a movie director of many a brilliant horror movie. Alfred Hitchcock also invented the Jockstrap," he wrote.
While that second part is not true and is a rather crass play on the director's name, Hitchcock did famously direct a horror movie called "The Birds."
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Some of Heald's followers had never considered that this type of bird-related disaster could happen.
"I never thought about the birds that cannot complete their migrations because of a storm," Barry Walker wrote. "I am sure that this happens on all cruise lines during storms and the crew do the best that can in keeping the decks in order."
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Diane Staup-Kahn thanked Heald for sharing this particular nightmare scenario:
"Wow. I've never experienced (or even considered the possibility) that issue on any of my cruises. I'm sure it can be unnerving, but your explanation was very helpful. Your experience and patience are a true asset to Carnival."
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