Mass Migration Phenomena

Where Have All The Homeless Gone?

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By Mark Connolly
Editor, Dallas Bureau

Each year I am fascinated by the sudden arrival of the cold and hungry shortly before the fourth Thursday in November, and their equally precipitous disappearance on the 26th of December. For approximately one month these roving bands move into my city, scarf up on freebies, and then fade away into the collective backgrounds of our minds, like a mist vanishing on a sunny morn. I suppose they return to their vacation homes in Flordia.

How do they travel around? You'd think there would be some kind of reports or something. Hell, they track Santa on the radio on Christmas Eve. Why don't they track the migration of these gypsies that swarm into towns like locusts, living off the good will of the residents, and then, apparently fattened up enough to last a full year, dissappear once again to where ever they came from? You'd think the migration would be tracked on National Geographic TV or something.

In the old days, these folks would have been tagged and tracked by Jim from Mutual of Omaha. "And now Jim, having darted a big male, will install the painless ear tag - Ka-snick. Never mind the reaction of the homeless man. He was not harmed, only alarmed by the sound of the ear clamping device going off so loudly next to his ear. There, now he is running off to join his band."

Those were the days of real science. FB