Wham. Windshields have been obliterated. Small planes have been mangled. Enormous jet engines have been totally destroyed.

Well, if it is a bird, and you're in a plane that's going to hit the bird, not even Superman's going to save the day. The bird's a goner for sure, and the chances are pretty good that the plane is going to at least be heavily damaged. In some rare cases birds have brought down commercial and military jets, killing pilots and passengers.

What got me thinking about this subject were recent news clippings from Fort Meyers, Florida. Seems the local shelter there for Border collie dogs has been garnering a lot of favorable press because it donated a dog to Southwest Florida International Airport. The 35-pound bundle of barely contained canine energy -- cleverly named Jet -- has been trained to scare away birds from the airport's 5.5 acres.

Scare away birds from the airport? Is this really necessary? A Boeing 737-300 weighs about 125,000 pounds on takeoff, for goodness sake. What harm can a bird do to an airplane like that?

As it turns out, lots. And the number of bird strikes, as they're known, is climbing every year. Fortunately there's a huge subculture dedicated to finding humane ways to keep birds off airfields.

Consider a 12-pound Canada goose. When it smacks a fully loaded jet aircraft at full takeoff rotation speed of 150 mph that goose hits the jet with roughly the same force as a 1,000 pound weight dropped from about 10 feet. Wham. Windshields have been obliterated. Small planes have been mangled. Enormous jet engines have been totally destroyed.

The Bird Strike Committee based in Sandusky, Ohio, is the U.S. brain trust for research into ways to keep birds and planes apart. Its leader, Richard Dolbeer, is a research biologist for the USDA. Dolbeer's group has maintained an inter-agency database with the Federal Aviation Administration on bird strike data since 1991. Its contents are compiled from reports filed voluntarily basis by pilots, mechanics and airport personnel.

BSC also sponsors annual meetings where representatives from airports, aircraft manufacturers and airline companies discuss strategies for keeping birds away from airfields, and the engines, controls and windshields of airplanes.

The number of bird strikes reported to FAA has more than doubled from 1991 to 1998, jumping from about 1,700 to 3,600, according to BSC. And those are just the reported strikes. Dolbeer figures 80 percent of U.S. bird strikes go unreported. In 1998, bird strikes accounted for $300 million (US) in damages to aircraft. Factor in figures from the United States Air Force and the collateral damage doubles.

Lives have been lost due to bird strikes too, although not many.

Only 325 people have are known to have died in bird strike aircraft crashes since the beginning of aviation, according to BSC. The last time birds killed airline passengers in the United States was in 1960, when a flock of Canada Geese took down a Lockheed Electra taking off from Boston's Logan International Airport. And a USAF Boeing 707 "AWACS" radar/surveillance jet crashed on takeoff in 1995 at Elmendorf AFB in Alaska after geese crippled the jet. All 24 crew died.

"I don't think it's so big a deal that passengers need to worry about it," Dolbeer said. "It's definite more of a financial worry."

Keeping birds off airfields is a tough job because birds see airfields as giant wildlife preserves.

Sure, jet engine noise may grate on a bird's nerves to a certain extent, but the bird knows there are acres and acres of plentiful food and frolicking on an airfield, with no humans around to spoil the party. Canada Geese for example, of which there are approximately 2 million in the United States, eat about three pounds of grass a day. Humans can get in the way of an appetite like that.

Even so, why is there such a huge increase in the number of reported strikes?

In part it's because more people are reporting strikes. But there are other reasons. Wildlife populations have increased in recent years because of successful preservation and management efforts. Air traffic is increasing too, and modern aircraft are quieter and faster, meaning they actually surprise the birds more.

The upshot of more planes and more birds can be gleaned from a recent Boeing study. It predicts a 25 percent chance of a bird strike crash involving a commercial airliner in the next 10 years. Fathom that and you begin to understand why participation in the BSC annual meeting has leapt from a dozen attendees in 1991 to over 300 this year's gathering in Vancouver.

So, what's new this year? Bad grass. Well, bad grass and Jet.

But the big drag on dog patrols at airports is that someone's got to train the dog, feed the dog and pull ticks from behind the dog's ears. That all takes time and money, neither of which many airports find attractive. Past bird scare tactics have included propane cannon blasts and other pyrotechnics. Trouble is, birds learn to ignore these surprises.

Newer devices have included annoying laser lights. Some airports are tying scare tactics to hi-tech radar detection of approaching birds. Falconry has even been tried, but it's never caught on in a big way for the same reasons that Jet's an anomaly - too much husbandry. Bolstering nearby wetlands to attract birds away from the airfield is another ploy, but again it's time and resource consuming.

Which brings us to bad grass. Cheap and plentiful bad grass.

This year's BSC gathering heard from Environmental BioControl International, a Maryland company that has introduced a rather unsavory - to birds -- salad dressing. Called Flight Control, it scares birds away from airfields, parks and other grassy areas two ways.

First, it gives birds a bad stomach ache. Second, it makes grass look unappetizing to birds. Birds, you see, see ultraviolet light, and flight control makes the grass appear to be covered in little black dots. "It's a naturally occurring compound" found in the photosynthesis process used by plants, according to company president Ken Ballinger. "And it's effective without harming birds."

Biologist Dolbeer also has an interest in making sure that as few birds as possible are harmed -- he takes pride in government regulations that have restored bird populations. It's a question of balance, he says.

But it's also a question of liability. Air France sued John F. Kennedy International Airport for $5.1 million (US) after one of its Concorde jets struck a flock of geese while landing in June, 1995. Nobody died, but the plane's supersonic engines were utterly destroyed. Air France said that JFK hadn't done enough to keep birds away from the airport, and it won the money in an out-of-court settlement. JFK is now among the growing number of US airports, especially those near coastal waterways and attendant large bird populations, that employ full time wildlife biologists to keep birds and planes apart.

Wildlife biologists at airports? Stay tuned.