Fans of fancily feathered fowl were flummoxed a fortnight ago when they awoke to find that the flora that many of the famous parrots of telegraph hill called home was cut down. And yes, the sentence above makes no sense, but go with it. The trees were cut down early Monday morning by property owner John Cowen who said he had to cut down the tree because it was old and falling apart and needed to do so for liability reasons. Cowen's neighbor is Mark Bittner, the subject of the documentary The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, who has been taking care of the birds since they mysteriously showed up one day and started propagating themselves.

Now here's where the story gets kind of tricky. In the Examiner’s story, Cowen is seen as a good-guy trying to make the best out of a bad situation. He left two of the cypress trees up that the birds live in and swears that it's not the distraction of the birds or the noise; it's just that the trees are getting dangerous. The Chronicle's story, however, paints him in more Snidely Whiplash-mode and makes it out that he snuck in and cut down the trees without letting anyone know so nobody would raise a ruckus. Or maybe the villainy was because Cowen found time to return the Examiner's call but not the Chron. Kind of like Chris Daly.

Either way, everyone seems pretty amenable to figuring something out and one of their neighbors has said that he’ll do whatever he can to help out, including paying for upkeep and insurance. Rest assured, everyone seems in agreement that Telegraph Hill will still be a place that's gone to the birds.