I'll Break Their Bloody Necks: In which I Pit the pigeons cooing outside my window.

The BBQ Pit
1

“Coo-coo-coo <beat> coo-coo-coo <beat> coo-coo-coo.”

Understand, I don’t hate animals. I rather like them, actually, or at least the ones with fur that make pleasent yipping and meowing and braying sounds. Bears are very interesting and not nearly so scary as you might think. Snakes are fine, too, as long as they aren’t in my sleeping bag. Dolphins, whales, sea lions, sea otters, I all rather like. I even have a soft spot in my heart for the much maligned class of cephalopodia. Heck, some of my best friends are octopuses. My favorite childhood memories are hearing the crickets scrape and collecting lightning bugs. The occasional parrot is quite all right, and I envy the eagle for its ability to soar majestically.

But there’s one thing I cannot stand, and that is a pigeon.

I despise the bloody things. The crap everywhere. They flock upon your while you’re eating a sandwich under the blue sky, and peck at every scrap. If you are inattentive, even for a moment, they’ll nip away at your packet of crisps, drink from your beer, and steal your napkins. They are, even of the aves which I like least of all classes, the worst of the bunch, the vertable Pauly Shore of avarians.

The particular bird, or rather pair, as they always come, like fungal infections, in twos, are assessing the posibility of nesting the gable above my bedroom. I look forward, every morning, to waking up to the grating “coo-coo-coo” sound of pigeons informing the world that their disease-ridden bodies are up for another day of theivery, petty harassment, and general nusience-making.

I’d blast them into oblivion, if I could. As it stands, I have only a slingshot with half-inch marbles to try to warn them off. I am, though, no Tom Sawyer with the slingshot and the greatest risk is not to be birds but the windows of my neighbors. greatly limiting my acceptible lines of fire.

I hate pigeons.

Well, you can’t care about every damn thing.[sup]1[/sup]

Stranger

With apologies to Douglas Adams

2

Pigeons are rock doves and I think doves are loverly.

Never live anywhere near me. Right now I am trying to tame the squirrels that live in the tree outside my front door by feeding every day.

I’d feed the birds too but there don’t seem to be that many in my little courtyard. Guess the squirllies chased them off.

3

COOOOO COOOOOOO!

[sub]I thought I’d just get this out of the way[/sub]

4

Well, you could get a ceramic raptor (falcon, eagle, owl, or some other bird-of-prey) and prop it up outside your window. You’d have to move it around periodically, but I’ve heard they’re effective.

5

I empathize with your bird rage.

6

Pigeons are rats with wings. Also, squirrels are rats with bushy tales.

I like animals too. I like 'em far away from me.

My cats are not really animals. They are evil geniuses.

7

Wow! Some people really reacted strongly to your “bird rage”.

I guess I should pull the asbestos panties out of the hope chest.
Actually, this isn’t my first disagreement with birds. There was the vulture that flew into my windshield back in '90. And the exotic animal farm from which ostriches and emus would regularly escape and wander into our yard back in college. (Those things are bloody dangerous, by the way. Don’t ever get between an ostrich and a SHINEY THING, lest you be disembowled.) And then there were the grackles that decided to roost on the roof.

Don’t even get me started on geese. I don’t like foie gras or the process by which it is made, but I’d take it up if it meant less geese in the world.

Hmmm…I guess I have a “history” with birds, come to think of it. Maybe it’s just an expression of some kind of neurosis or inferiority complex.

Well, I hope I can get over my guilt and anger in the future so I can be happy with myself. :smiley:

Stranger

8

I can’t stand the feathered vermin, either.

A couple of years ago, a pair nested in a gable just outside our bedroom window, too. Their union bore fruit, which fledgling fruit thumped and flapped and gurgled away all night long. We finally had to call in a pest control guy, who cleaned out and netted off the niche and put “pigeon pokers” on other parts of our roof. Yuck! There were a couple of pounds of guano in there, and just a couple of feet from our bedroom window, too. We live near a feed store, and the spilled corn and oats around the store keep the local pigeon population fat and thriving.

9

I understand that a rubber snake would also be effective.

As long as you don’t live in some snakeless region, where the pigeons would look at it and say, “WTF?” (in pigeonese)

As your location field places you in Pasadena, CA, this shouldn’t be a issue.

10

I know what a raptor is, but I have to admit that when I read this I had a mental image of a little clay velociraptor scaring away pigeons. I’ve only recently stopped laughing.

11

Tom Lehrer, on the subject of pigeons

http://members.aol.com/quentncree/lehrer/pigeons.htm

“…When they see us coming the birdies all try and hide,
But they still go for peanuts when coated with cyanide…”

I can’t believe I’m the first to mention Lehrer here!

12

Do the pigeons taunt you like this one does?

13

Pigeons? At least pigeons have a pleasant call. Here in Texas we’ve got grackles, which have all the bad habits of pigeons PLUS they have a raucous call. They’re foul fowl, and many times my husband has washed my car in the morning and by noon, it’s covered with droppings from the grackles.

The city of Fort Worth has tried several methods to remove these filthy avians from the Water Gardens. Mostly, the methods make the place unnattractive to humans but the birds continue to flock and shit there.

14

Aux armes, Stranger! I’m with you on this one all the way. The guy across the street closed up a broken window that pigeons had been using to get into his attic, where they’d roosted for years. Like, lots of them. So they got confused and flew around the neighborhood for a few days, then decided to camp out on the narrow ledges above my second-floor windows. The cooing alone was enough to vex me sorely, but then there was the scrape, scrape, scrape of their cold, scrawny, leathery feet on the metal flashing on the ledges. And then, after a few weeks, the pigeon shit on the cars in the driveway and on my plants in the border. When I did a little research and found out how many diseases these evil avians carry around with them in the form of their stupid pigeon shit, that was it, they had to go.

I spent a few weeks spraying them intermittently with the garden hose from the driveway – they’d leave for a few hours and then come back. Then the old lady down the street, who knows these things, told me what to do – spray their hangouts with ammonia. So that’s what I did – got up on a ladder with a spray bottle of ordinary (not scented, as she was careful to point out) ammonia, and sprayed the hell out of the tops of the window ledges. They’ve never come back.

They’re the devil’s spawn. Don’t let 'em win. Got your spray bottle? Go get 'em, tiger!

15

One of these puppies ought to do the trick nicely. :wink:

16

Have you considered an air rifle instead of the slingshot? Much less skill required.

17

I got this idea from another site. You might try tying strings to some AOL CD’s and let them dangle near the nesting sites. As they move in the breeze they’ll startle the birds. And you’ll get more than a thousand free hours use out of them. :smiley:

18

I love pigeons. They’re doves, and I love doves, so I love pigeons. I think doves are just the cutest birds ever, with their poofy chests and round heads and huge eyes and little beaks. When I lived up in Dallas I would actively encourage doves to nest around my apartment.

I will agree with Lynn, though – grackles are the lice of Satan.

19

Hmm…I tried to look for an appropriate .wav but could only find a mildly annoying coo.

My pigeons sound like the Hound of the Baskervilles; a creepy, eeire, bone-chilling sound that announces the coming of the Old Ones From Places Better Left Unknown. And they start up at 2.37am like clockwork. I’ve considered calling the Pentagon to see if they can test some of that National Missile Defense crap on my pigeons, but word is it doesn’t actually work all that well, or indeed, at all, yet. (And since my employer is responsible for the systems that aren’t in place, I guess it is ultimately my fault. :rolleyes: )

But I agree that grackles are the hideous spawn of alien invaders that should be vaporized with the most effective particle beam technology available. Maybe we can get ahold of some of those 1920’s Style Death-Rays people are always going on about.

Stranger

20

The man across the street feeds the local swarm of pigeons. He runs out of his apartment building into the driveway of the apartments next door and scatters a bucketful of birdseed in his neighbour’s driveway, then scurries back inside and peers out his window. And then hell descends from the rooftops…

Pigeons wanting to nest on our back stairs. Pigeons nesting in our chimney. Pigeons on the windowsill cooing their stupid brains out at 6 o’clock in the freakin’ morning.

At least we don’t live in the apartment building next door to PigeonManFreak. They have literally hundreds of pigeons sitting on the damn roof all day doing that stupid cooing.

God I hate pigeons. I think I hate PigeonManFreak even more.