Does this happen where you live? You see or hear a helicopter in the distance. You watch for a few seconds and realize it’s not going anywhere. It’s just hovering. And then you know something like news is happening nearby. Much of the summer, the appearance of helicopters over the UC-Berkeley campus signaled some new hijinks related to a group of tree-sitters trying to stop a construction project at the football stadium. Last spring, a chopper appeared in the dawn skies just a few blocks east of us and just sat there. Turned out a local guy had committed suicide by ramming his car into a line of parked vehicles at 100 mph.
This morning’s case in point this morning: While walking The Dog, we spotted a helicopter just hanging up there to the west, near I-80, the Eastshore Freeway. Two possibilities: a horrific traffic jam, possibly involving major roadway carnage, or some other photogenic event. When we got back to the house, we turned on KCBS, the AM all-“news” channel. The first traffic report comes on. No, nothing about a backup on the freeway down there. What then? During the local news segment, there’s an item about a body discovered burning on the frontage road adjacent to the freeway. Police are investigating. Choppers are hovering.
In case the body tries to make a break for it? Looks like a pretty gruesome crime though, doesn’t it?
At The Examiner, we had a newsroom term for this kind of discovery: “grisly find.” This was definitely one of those.
One morning at about 5:00 a.m. I was awakened to the distinctive thwump thwump thwump of a large military helicopter hovering (hoovering?) low over my neighborhood. The percussion of this thing was shaking the house. I jumped up and ran outside whereupon the helicopter flew away. Not sure what he was looking for, but I guess it wasn’t me.
I think you get a lot more helicopters living in a metropolitan area.