Birds Of A Feather

Over the years, I gradually began noticing more and more references to birds with regard to the case of myself and my children. At first I thought it was coincidental, but now I'm not so sure. I'll let you decide for yourself.

The first private investigator I hired, Ed Hodges, ran a company called Peregrine International that had a falcon's head as its logo. It was this company I hired Hodges under. He never told me he had a separate investigation company called Pegasus; I only knew Pegasus as his email address. (Hodges only directed me to his own company website and never explained about the Texas DPS-PSB website, where I would have learned about the second company--and the fact that he, his investigators, and Peregrine weren't properly licensed.)

A woman who worked for Hodges named Sandy used "piasabird" as her email address in her dealings with me. She was the woman who shocked me by telling me outright that her Middle Eastern-sounding last name was the result of an arranged marriage for purposes of immigration fraud. (In fact, at the time, I thought she was joking.) She was also the woman who called me out of the blue one night and tried her best to persuade me to go on a free cruise with her--and got mad when I turned her down. She is also the woman who gave me information about the suspicious death of her own sister in another state, both by email and on the phone.

Many of the long (often cross-country) driving trips of my father and step-mother and their friends supposedly revolve around bird-watching activities. They make these trips regularly, and while on them, they meet up with other "birders", often in Florida or near the Canadian or Mexican borders.

Some of the harassment directed at my kids and me over the years has involved loud, obnoxious bird noises of various kinds. Often when my children and I get undressed, someone broadcasts amplified owl hoots outside our windows. Different bird sounds are also broadcast when we are outside or trying to sleep, and these noises are usually far too loud to be natural. For a long time, someone at the local grocery store would broadcast loud jungle bird (or ape) noises outside the front of the store as I walked across the parking lot to go in or out. People often drive by us, lean out the windows of their vehicles, and make these sorts of noises at us. [No doubt my posting this will result in a new round of this behavior!]

Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who has a ranch here and is very wealthy, owns a private investment company called Falcon Seaboard Company. As detailed previously in this blog, I was once harassed on I-10 by someone in a large, bright red SUV that had a custom lt. governor's license plate, and when this vehicle finally sped off, its place tailgating me was immediately taken by my ex-husband and his wife in one of their many pickup trucks.

Dewhurst has refused repeated requests from various watchdog agencies to provide documentation and information regarding his personal financial, real estate, and corporate dealings as required under open records laws. He also refuses to publicly explain certain secretive trips he's made to Washington, D.C. and elsewhere on taxpayer time. Dewhurst once worked for the CIA in Bolivia; coincidentally, my nephew did a summer internship in Bolivia a few years ago.

There's one final bird-related piece of information you need to know. The Spanish word for falcon is used by Mexican narco-traffickers as a term for a drug lookout or scout.