An MIT student spent an entire summer going to the Harvard football
  field every day wearing a black and white striped shirt, walking up
  and down the field for ten or fifteen minutes throwing birdseed all
  over the field, blowing a whistle and then walking off the field. At
  the end of the summer, it came time for the first Harvard football
  game, the referee walked onto the field and blew the whistle. The game
  had to be delayed for a half hour to wait for the birds to get off the
  field. The guy wrote his thesis on this, and graduated.