ROME LETTER: For the newly-arrived resident in Rome, there is only one thing more intimidating than driving in the Eternal City and that is finding somewhere to park. Given that the city of Rome is currently overrun by 2.4 million cars (or 893 cars for every 1,000 citizens) yet has only 84 official car parks, you can imagine the size of the problem.
If, as a visitor to Rome, you ever wondered why it was difficult to find the footpaths, you can rest assured they exist all right. It is just that they are buried beneath rows of double-parked cars.
You can imagine my newly-arrived sense of valorous achievment many years ago when I discovered a row of half-empty berths in a car park just off Piazza della Repubblica, close to Rome's Termini Station. This time, there was no need to get out the slide rule and make the usual complicated geometric calculations before squeezing the car into a space normally reserved for toddlers' bikes.
That's shown those Romans, I thought to myself, as I locked the car. Fancy so many people missing out on such a good space, I chortled triumphantly. Or could it be that they have all gone home early, I wondered? Alas, on my return to the car many hours later, all was revealed. Starlings, or "storni" as they are known in these parts, provided the answer. Thousands of the little blighters had left their "visiting cards" all over the car which was now in danger of changing colour from green to yuck.
In retrospect, I should have suspected something when the car park attendant came over to give me the ticket as I parked. Even though it was a dry, not especially hot day, he moved everywhere under the protection of an umbrella. That seemingly innocent household article was, of course, nothing less than a sophisticated anti-air raid defence system.
The starlings came to mind this week when reading of a series of accidents in central Via Monte Brianzo and on Lungotevere Marzio, alongside the Tiber. No road surface known to man is more insidious than one liberally visited by our little winged friends and then doused over by autumnal Rome rains.
In the resultant greasy, yucky mess, three motor bike riders went down in the first half hour of the Great Evening Getaway Charge, otherwise known as rush hour.
Last week, things got so bad in the same river-side area that police had to close off to traffic one whole section of the Lungotevere while they tried to pick the fallen motor bike riders out of the, erh, visiting cards. (By the way, if I were Saddam Hussein, I would give serious consideration to starlings - just think of the problems they could cause US tanks.)
Romans have long since become used to their resident starling population. It is not unusual to see people stop in the street to watch in admiration as thousands of starlings lay on a synchronised skydiving show, weaving intricate patterns as they swarm, swoop and loop across the evening sky.
Their visiting cards, however, are a problem, and not just for motor cyclists. Special units of municipal workers are out every night hosing down pavements in an attempt to keep the corrosive droppings at bay and make the city safe for motor cyclists, roller skaters and old age pensioners.
Even the Italian League for the Protection of Birds (LIPU) is regularily called in to help out. If traffic police consider an area has become too polluted, then the men from LIPU arrive, complete with a loud speaker system that sends out the same acoustic "alarm signal" used by the starlings themselves when faced with imminent danger.
In this manner, the starlings are "persuaded" to move on from one set of trees to another, preferably situated in public parks or gardens and not alongside busy traffic arteries. The little blighters who caused this week's problems had apparently been unwittingly evicted from the gardens of the Castel Sant'Angelo, beside the Vatican, by a similar "alarm signal" clean-out by LIPU.
For some, the starlings are no laughing matter. Indeed, they may yet even become an international incident.
Given that many of the starlings come south to Rome from Sweden, Roberto Vernarelli, president of XVIIth Municipal Area of Rome, wants the Swedish Ministry of the Environment to introduce some form of population control, at source.
In the meantime and while awaiting developments on that front, the rest of us will continue to be careful where we park in Rome.