For the birds

When most people think of homelessness, they don’t think of birds.
People, yes. Even stray cats and dogs.
Yet when Matthew Grapstul of Troop 27 saw old trees being cleared for development, he immediately knew birds were being displaced.
Sure, people planted new trees to replace the old trees. It’s just not the same.
Old trees, Grapstul said, were generally large trees, which housed whole families of birds the newly-planted trees could not accommodate.
This is part of the reason why he decided to build bird houses as his project for the Eagle Scouts.
Eagle Scout is the highest rank a scout can achieve, and requires not only a history of achievement through the earning of merit badges in areas of knowledge (which include everything from citizenship and first aid to communications and environmental science), but the rank also requires a demonstration of leadership through a service project, something that shows the scout can lead others to plan and carry out a specific plan.
This means that Grapstul had to begin thinking as an adult, and to deal with many of the issues adults face in everyday life.
Perhaps this is why when he first thought of the project at 10 years old, he wasn’t quite ready.
He remembers seeing similar bird houses – he calls them bird condos – while on a trip to Point Pleasant. He stopped and stared out at the houses and said to himself, “This is what I want to do.”
Grapstul is an ambitious boy, wanting with all his heart not to just become an Eagle Scout – a rare and significant accomplishment in itself – but to become the youngest Eagle Scout in Bayonne Boy Scout history.
But this was even too much of an ambition for anyone to achieve at 10. So he had to learn one other valuable lesson: how to wait for the right time.
“I realized I still had a lot to learn,” he said.
He also had other interests such as sports to occupy his days, and so could afford to wait a little.
He eventually started his project in the eigth grade, still with the ambitious idea that he might become the youngest scout to reach the rank of Eagle in Bayonne.
Over the last three years, he began to work diligently. The plan to build and install bird condominiums began in earnest in March 2006 after about a year of preliminary work.
Planning all along to put up these homes for birds in public parks, Grapstul began to understand the complexity of modern society as he organized volunteers, sought donors for materials, and devolved through the red tape surrounding getting permits.
While city workers helped him in many ways, they also put a lot of the burden on his shoulders, telling him “after all, this is your project.”
Donations came from a lot of places, especially small businesses that allowed his crew to use recycled materials from construction projects to help build the houses. Merlo Paint in Bayonne donated the paint. Even Home Depot donated.
The bird house project has symbolic meaning at a time when housing and homelessness are issues. While advocates exist for humans who lose their dwelling places, often whole bird populations become homeless when trees get diseased or are cut down.
He said that although the old trees are replaced by new plantings, these small saplings hardly provide the kind of shelter the old trees provided.
His goal was to help provide homes for those birds.
But one of the lessons he soon learned is that you don’t just put up something in a park, you have to seek approvals from the local government, and this means red tape.
He started making calls during his Easter vacation. He had to draft plans. With the help of local and county officials such as James Monkowski, Bayonne’s environment specialist; Tom McCann, director of Hudson County Parks; and Gary Chmielewski, the director of Bayonnne’s Department of Public Works; the project moved ahead, and the group managed to install their first bird house in Rutkowski Park last summer.
In order to meet the requirements, Grapstul had to give a full accounting of what it took to accomplish the project, including the 31 volunteers and the more than 700 accumulated hours put in.
But a project is more than just an accumulation of hours. It must also benefit the community somehow. Providing a place for birds to rest and raise families seemed as noble a cause as any to Grapstul. He said with all the trees getting cut down, he knew that birds needed somewhere to go. With each new house he puts up, Grapstul provides homes to homeless birds.
One of his mentors was Michael Macalush, a former leader of Troop 27, who died before the project was complete and to whom the project was dedicated.
As with many projects, this became a test of Grapstul’s resolve. More than once, he was tempted to put it aside and pursue something else. At times, he did. But he came back to the project and at times wondered if he would ever finish.
But often, he and his volunteers had to confront very practical questions on how to install the pole or how to find water to make the necessary concrete for the footing. Each time, he and his team came up with an answer, solving problem after problem as each came up.
Now 17, he has been in the Boy Scouts for 12 years, and the completion of the ambitious birdhouse project means he can now graduate to the ranks of Eagle Scout, which changes his life.
Scouting, although sometimes a lot of work, is also a lot of fun. But as an Eagle Scout, Grapstul moves on out of the ranks and into a leadership role. While this is the aim of most scouts, it is also a bittersweet accomplishment, a passage out of youth into manhood.