Fighter jets, flying lizards, dragons prey on the helpless

by ANDREW KNAPP

The sky around the Washington Monument is choked with hundreds of lobsters, sharks and octopi, gliding owls, eagles and falcons, and a soaring Superman, Spiderman and Batman. Jet fighters, Spitfires and cargo planes join them in flight.

From the air, they survey the National Mall, sporadically dive-bombing the thousands of innocent men, women and children on the ground.

Spectators walk through the crowds and inquisitively gawk at the flying objects. They scatter when the kites drop. Children scream, as their parents grab them from the objects’ near-deadly paths.

Calvin Shih, 50, stops near the White House side of the monument to watch a Navy blue, turquoise and white triangular kite as it darts from side to side, up and down, skimming over people’s heads.

“It’s kinda dangerous,” Shih says. “You have to pay attention.”

The gaggle of kites is part of the Smithsonian Kite Festival, a major first-day event for the National Cherry Blossom Festival. Thousands of people have come out to enjoy the sunny and mildly breezy Saturday morning. Some are here to win awards for their intricate kite designs or flashy maneuvers. Some are here for fun. Others just watch — sometimes in peril.

A sweaty runner stops near Shih, jogs in place and watches the spinning kite as it swoops dangerously close to spectators.

“I didn’t know it would be so dangerous,” Shih says as he eyes the sky carefully.

Michael Melvin’s stealth fighter-shaped, two-string kite with 300-pound-test lines catches Shih’s attention. Melvin, 23, guides it with ease, pulling it horizontally, vertically and diagonally, as it makes a deafening whipping sound when the wind resists — like a jet plane breaking the sound barrier.

A woman with short blond hair talks into a cell phone that hugs her right ear as she plugs her left ear with an index finger.

“There’s this guy with this crazy kite,” she says. “It’s so loud.”

The dancing form of Melvin’s kite stands out. Others fly straight. His kite twists, twirls and bobs left or right with the movement of his left or right hand, each grasping a string.

“It’s just like a remote-controlled car,” Melvin tells the dozens stopping to watch. “If I had space, I could do some really crazy stuff.”

Even though there are too many people for “really crazy” tricks, Melvin carefully pilots his stealth fighter just feet above the ground. He purposely nicks the tops of people’s baseball caps or ruffles their hair.

But then he loses control, rises from his cockpit, a comfy lawn chair, and scurries to regain command.

“Move back,” Shih warns a boy obliviously licking a Popsicle while walking through Melvin’s path.

John Neidecker, 46, and his twin 2-year-olds, Mazie and Sadie, cover their heads as it swoops above them.

“Ahhh,” Mazie screams.

Sadie just stands quietly holding a doll and her breath as the kite flies inches above her.

“Oh my god,” says a mother munching on Cool Ranch Doritos with her two children as they sit on a nearby picnic blanket.

Melvin regains control and floats the kite softly onto its back and onto the ground.

“They were afraid,” Shih says.

“Yeah, I lost the wind,” Melvin says. “That one’s dead.”

With Melvin’s flight grounded, the monument grounds quickly turn quiet. The Pterodactyls, biplanes and dragons are noiseless.

But the wind picks up again, and Melvin gets a taste of his own medicine. A kite resembling a U.S. flag nosedives to his feet.

“My kite almost fell on his head,” Allison Black, 29, tells a friend.

Marine One and National Park Service helicopters fly over occasionally. But below their airspace and even with Melvin’s kite on the ground, there’s still a flurry of red, green, fluorescent pink and orange kites flying through the muted blue sky.

“The FAA must be having a field day,” one man says.

Gia Davis, a Smithsonian paramedic at the scene, says no one has been injured beyond rope burns from kite strings. Davis says that, in the past, people have been trampled by inattentive fliers or poked in the eye while they weren’t looking.

“But nothing yet [today],” she says.

Most injuries have befallen the kites themselves. A large falcon, a duck and a rainbow-colored Toucan Sam lie in their graves amid a grove of blossomed cherry trees on the White House side of the Washington Monument. Their wings are tattered. Their strings are snipped.

But as Harry Gedney, a National Park Service ranger, surveys the kites that are still flying high — some higher than the monument itself, the maximum height limit — he talks about past incidents.

“Until the 1960s, there was an ordinance on flying kites on the Mall,” Gedney says. “It was something about scaring horses, but that doesn’t really apply now.”

“They sometimes scare people, but then again, that’s all part of the fun.”