Seinfeld question

In the episode where Jerry is dating a Miss American contestant (Miss Rhode Island, they’re never in contention), Jerry and George are staying at the hotel where the contest is being held. Because some doves (belonging to Miss RI) were making noise outside, Jerry pours out a bucket of water on them to shut them up. The next morning, Miss RI finds them dead.

Now, doves are outside animals, they’re not like domesticated cats and dogs that may have trouble living in the wild. How does a bucket of water kill them? Wouldn’t they just dry themselves off? Its not like there was a blizzard outside and Jerry killed them by freezing them to death, they were sleeping with the door open and Miss RI kept them outside at night anyway. How could those doves have died?

That’s a good question. I just rooted around online a bit and can’t find either an answer, or any other speculation on why water would have been lethal to doves. (Where’s the human spirit of inquiry, I ask you?)

Now I’m wondering if that question arose at the table reading of that script. If so, was the answer ‘in this show, the inexplicable is expected’…?

The force of a bucket of water falling on a dove is like the force of a fire hose hitting a human. The water hit them with such force they were stunned and/or it was forced up their little beaks and they drowned.

Otherwise, I got nuthin’.

Stunned?

Yes, just as they were wakin’ up.

Shrinkage?

Bad comedy can kill Cathulu at a thousand paces if done right.

Birds are quite fragile and do not handle even moderate impact well. Birds die all the time flying into windows at moderate speeds. Still I doubt a bucket of water would kill them.

What does Jerry say exactly? For instance, if he said “I threw a bucket of water on them”, it might have included the bucket.

He didn’t say anything, they just showed it. He took their ice bucket which had water, though I guess it could have had some ice in there, then said “This will scare them off”, dumped the bucket of water over the railing, and put the bucket down.

The next morning, Miss RI said that she found her doves dead in a pool of water

Being as bright as most birds, they looked up and drowned.

Why would licking wedding invitations kill a human?

I love Seinfeld as much as the next aging yuppie. But I’m not silly enough to look for plausibility in the plots.

How many floors up was Jerry’s balcony? I can get a cage of doves. We’ll get to the bottom of this.

The evil wizard Plott Necessetti done it. He’s a busy fellow.

The water just made them wet, but they were so upset by the snubbing that they decided to kill themselves.

I see a potential Mythbusters episode here.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen the episode, but doesn’t Jerry shiver from cold when he gets out of bed? Perhaps the water combined with a cool NY evening did the trick.

Just one.

So it was a coo of some sort.

You’ll pay for that.

We’ll bill you.