Greece’s libraries are probably worse than its finances. Check out the sick and socking pictures from the municipal library of a Greek town, infested by pigeons (YouTube video)! I bet nobody had stepped foot in there for ages.
Also, see article with picture here. It’s in Greek but pictures speak louder than words anyway. Keep sending me these gems!
Great folk-rock duo Simon & Garfunkel have mentioned pigeons in one of their songs, “At the Zoo”. Of course, as New Yorkers, they had first-hand knowledge of the filthy, winged-rats and therefore had nothing nice to say about them. Here’s the excerpt from the lyrics:
Pigeons plot in secrecy,
And hamsters turn on frequently.
What a gas! You gotta come and see
At the zoo.
A man was arrested for feeding pigeons near the Bob Hope airport in Burbank, California. Local courts had already given him two citations for the same reason in the past year but he refused to obey and continued feeding the nuisance birds. The number of airplane-bird collisions has significantly increased in recent months.
You may read more about it at the Houston Chronicle, the L.A. Times and KTLA.com. An FAA official said that “commercial airports are required to have wildlife mitigation plans, but those requirements don’t apply outside airport grounds“. Bob Hope is the 9th largest California airport by number of enplanements, according to Wikipedia data for 2008.
This is a very disturbing piece of news (for some reason…). New research (read here) has shown that feral, untrained pigeons can recognize humans and are not fooled by people changing their clothes. The evil ones are watching us people! They are watching us!
As a fan of the Andy Capp comic strip I was surprised to learn, in yesterday’s strip, that the poor low-life is the owner of… anything. The fact that this “anything” is a bunch of mangy pigeons, made it a bit more easy to digest! Check out the comic strip of April 29, 2011: http://comics.com/andy_capp/2011-04-29/
P.S. You may need to register (for free) to get access to the older content of the www.comics.com site.
This is an interesting legal story that I discovered at John Day’s site on tort law (“Day on Torts“). What it basically says is that a plaintiff in court who slipped on pigeon poop and fell was allowed to testify as an expert on the matter, based on his long exposure to it …at the site where the accident took place. Read his concise description.
The title of the Vancouver Observer’s webpage sums up the article pretty nicely. Paul Grant is a new favorite to this website as he very eloquently describes the problems posed by Vancouver’s increasing pigeon population.
(No love for pigeons from this old geezer, Paul Grant, Vancouver Observer, 2011-03-01)
These are the lyrics of a great comical song by music genius Tom Lehrer
I’d like to take you now on wings of song, as it were, and try and help you forget perhaps for a while your drab, wretched lives. here’s a song all about spring-time in general, and in particula
Out one of the many delightful pastimes the coming of spring affords us all.
Spring is here, a-suh-puh-ring is here.
Life is skittles and life is beer.
I think the loveliest time of the year is the spring.
I do, don’t you? ‘course you do.
But there’s one thing that makes spring complete for me,
And makes ev’ry sunday a treat for me.
All the world seems in tune
On a spring afternoon,
When we’re poisoning pigeons in the park.
Ev’ry sunday you’ll see
My sweetheart and me,
As we poison the pigeons in the park.
When they see us coming, the birdies all try an’ hide,
But they still go for peanuts when coated with cyanide.
The sun’s shining bright,
Ev’rything seems all right,
When we’re poisoning pigeons in the park.
Lalaalaalalaladoodiedieedoodoodoo
We’ve gained notoriety,
And caused much anxiety
In the audubon society
With our games.
They call it impiety,
And lack of propriety,
And quite a variety
Of unpleasant names.
But it’s not against any religion
To want to dispose of a pigeon.
So if sunday you’re free,
Why don’t you come with me,
And we’ll poison the pigeons in the park.
And maybe we’ll do
In a squirrel or two,
While we’re poisoning pigeons in the park.
We’ll murder them all amid laughter and merriment.
Except for the few we take home to experiment.
My pulse will be quickenin’
With each drop of strychnine
We feed to a pigeon.
It just takes a smidgin!
To poison a pigeon in the park.
In a study published last week in a scientific magazine, a team of Spanish researchers found out that a type of bacterium called Campylobacter jejuni was present in 69 % of the pigeons captured for the study (in urban squares in Spain). Another bacterium called Chlamydophila psittaci was found in 52% of the sample pigeons.
These bacteria are associated with acute diarrhea (the first one) and psittacossis (the second one) so their presence in pigeons should be seen a potential public health hazard.
Sources: China Daily, Boots-WebMD
If you are trying to get rid of pigeons and you have a question, leave it as a comment under this post. Everyone is welcome to chip in with their knowledge and experience.