Orange Traffic Cone Designated Official Bird of Tampa

Julian B. Lane Park – Hillsborough County – Monday 4.22.2019

As one of his final acts in office, Tampa mayor Bob Buckhorn has designated the orange traffic cone as the official bird of the city of Tampa. 

“As we revitalize our city by building new roads, new condos and not doing anything with entire city blocks of vacant buildings, orange traffic cones have become a symbol of growth,” said Buckhorn while speaking

“Orange traffic cones are a prominent part of the downtown landscape, they’re beautiful and too many people hit them with their cars,” the soon-to-be outgoing mayor said between sips of leftover green beer. “Now that they’re a protected species, we can fine the bejesus out of driver who run them over. Cha-CHING!” He did a fist pump motion and chugged the remainder of his beer. He noticed me staring and said, “Uh, this is river water.”

When I pointed out that traffic cones are inanimate objects and not actually birds, mayor Buckhorn said, “what’s the difference? Birds just sit there and you look at them and sometimes they get run over by cars. Same thing with traffic cones. And children. Would you rather have a child be the official city bird or that we use children as traffic cones?” Before I could ignore his rhetorical questions, he muttered, “the cost would be prohibitive. We’ve done studies.”