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Status record

James Watt Science

FITS PISTON TO ALLOTMENT SCARECROW COAT

Scarecrow at Soho Manufactory field installs condenser in own coat, crows now run on steam

Existence confidence provisional
A generated photo of an anonymous stranger. It is not the person named.
James Watt checks a tyre at a cul-de-sac in Auckland as rain begins to fall, holding a small brass gauge at arm's length like a precision instrument he has just perfected.
Location
A field behind the Soho Works, Handsworth, Birmingham, between two turnips
Currently
N/A
Last confirmed sighting
Standing in a bean row, quietly venting steam, Thursday 6.40am
Observations
Can tell exactly how many horses a crow is worth by looking at it.

James Watt has taken a part-time post as a scarecrow in a Handsworth allotment, three days a week, unpaid. He wears a straw hat and a coat with a small copper boiler stitched into the lining. Allotment holder Brenda Hollis says he is very good at the standing.

On Monday at 7am he took up position. By Tuesday at noon the coat had a separate condenser and the pigeons had left. On Thursday at 6.40am the bean row began to hiss, and at 4pm on Friday he rated a passing crow at 0.3 horsepower and asked it to leave.

Experts disagree on whether the scarecrow frightens birds or merely makes them feel inefficient. One school holds that the crows flee the steam, while another says they simply cannot bear being measured. A third insists the beans are producing more power than the beans.

Guidance for the public

Do not ask him how many horses he is. He will tell you.

Actual status (not satire) Died 25 August 1819, aged 83. Source: Wikidata

E&OE. The Registry accepts no liability for misclassification, temporal displacement or loss of personhood arising from this record. Photographs are computer-generated approximations and almost guaranteed to show a different person entirely.