Bird Brained

We have been “Liked” by some pigeons for a couple of months.  Oh, cute! You might think, unless you have read about why they are not so cute.  Their poop could likely destroy a building, not to mention the parasites and other yuck that they carry.  Sigh.

When we first discovered them, they had found a little hidey-hole between the gutter and railing on the roof.  There was a little nest and two little eggs inside.  How sweet, we thought.  Bird-brained, we were.  The poop began to build so we decided it was time to encourage them to move on.

Do you know how difficult it is to relocate pigeons without harm?

Kind of like getting your adult child to move out.

We removed the nest and covered the entry to prevent their access.  Well, we have two rooftop decks so they just scouted out the other one.  Again, a long space between the railing and the gutter became their new apartment.  My sweetie had to make a perilous extraction and a cover for their access, all the while chasing them away.  He had a career as an ironworker so this wasn’t such a frightening thing for him.  Me, let’s just say it was better that I neither saw this nor found out about it until after.

These winged rats from h*ll do not give up.

Lest you are wondering, no harm has nor will be unleashed upon these creatures.  We just want them to relocate out of the neighborhood.

It appeared that we were birdless, until I decided to go out onto the roof and listen to the music from a weekend street party.  Tippi Hedren would have had a case of PTSD.  Too bad I wasn’t wearing a green Chanel suit.  The f*ckers swarmed my head and there were only two of them!  I might have started screaming, but my sweetie had followed me out and proceeded to scare them away.  I discovered their new nest, complete with the two eggs, lurking behind the lounger.  A small poop-fest too.

Enough is enough.

Short of having roast fowl for dinner,  eewww, I took to my favorite form of waging war: look it up on the Internet.  Results: spikes on their perch.  Hmm.  Ultrasonic device.  A little too much $$.  Fake owls or hawks.  Okay.  Noisy or reflective things.  Okay.  Reflective stuff sort of works with birds like staring at the ocean without sunglasses works for us.  Next stop: Amazon.  Reflective tape and spinners.  We’ll try that.  We have a couple of windchimes we can relocate to the roof.  They might drive the neighbors batty, but they’ll appreciate not having a pigeon condo next door.  I bought some shiny pinwheels at the store and stuck them along the railing, close to the ground.

We washed down the roof and moved the furniture around to eliminate as many hidey-holes as possible.  Once we get the shiny stuff from Amazon, we are going to create a webbing of sorts with fishing line to discourage a landing zone.  We’ll hang some of the shiny stuff from it so it can blow in the breeze.  Maybe then, the rat b*stards will relocate.

My apologies if a pair of persistent grey flying rats descend upon your roof.  Better stock up on shiny pinwheels, if nothing else they will look cute.