Fuck Pigeons

If God has a plan for each and every creature on this green planet, then He must have put pigeons here for me to throw buckets of flaming gasoline on, because that’s where things are headed right about now. I have had it with fucking pigeons.

The house that I moved into in 2000 was brand new, and I remember the day that a pigeon first decided that it’d be a good idea to land on my roof. I was in an upstairs bedroom, as was my pet beagle, and I simply opened the window and stuck my dog’s head out. My dog scared that pigeon so badly that I never saw a pigeon on my roof again, not once in thirteen years. Good boy! Good, good boy!

But the house I moved into 18 months ago was already home to a couple of pigeons who appear to be of the opinion that no house is complete without a large pile of pigeon shit in the front of it. I know my current dog isn’t going to help me out because sometimes I’ll come home and he won’t hear me, and when I look out into the back yard, there he is, lazing the day away with his pigeon friends all around him. Seriously, he’s ok-fine with the pigeons. Occasionally, one of them will walk right up to his bowl and start snacking on any food he might have left behind, and he’s cool with this. This is not normal dog behavior. He is way too mellow. I wonder if they sell doggie drug tests?

A lot of houses in the neighborhood have state of the art Anti-Pigeon Technology installed, by which I mean nails and wire in the places where they don’t want pigeons to roost. This works, but has the unintended effect of making your house look like it doubles as a maximum security detention facility for kids. If they somehow make it up the chimney, the razor wire and electric fence will keep those little fuckers from escaping!

Next maybe you’ll think twice before you refuse to eat your vegetables.

So rather than go through the hassle of installing that (which would directly lead to the hassle of me falling off the roof and breaking my neck), I installed an owl. Really. I got a realistic looking plastic owl with a head that swivels side to side when the wind blows. He looks downright fierce. The kids call him Sir Hoots-a-lot. In a matter of hours he became best friends with the pigeons, who must be the most congenial fucking birds in the world.

I was on the ladder, attaching Sir Hoots-a-lot to a small platform I’d created specifically for this purpose. And when I pulled out Sir Hoots-a-lot, the pigeons on the roof (who had been lolling around, watching me disinterestedly like a bunch of stoned teens on Spring Break) suddenly took notice and flew off in a real hurry. So I was optimistic that Sir Hoots-a-lot was going to be earning his keep, and I went inside to look at Brazilian amputee fetish porn get a little work done.

When I came out a couple of hours later, there were the pigeons, acting as non-chalant as ever, which is a difficult look to maintain when you’re constantly shitting. It’s weirdly impressive.

Me: Goddamn it, Hoots-a-lot, can’t you see the fucking pigeons?

Sir Hoots-a-lot: Who?

Me: The pigeons! The fucking pigeons! Right there in front of you!

Sir Hoots-a-lot: (slowly swivels head “No” in the breeze)

Sir Hoots-a-lot

Needless to say, it was time to introduce firearms into the equation. Of course, I am a responsible adult with three children, so I opted for a semi-automatic assault rifle, the thinking being that the high velocity rounds were likely to pass through my targets entirely, whizzing completely out of my neighborhood to land safely in that new park they just built behind the orphanage.

Hahaha! I’m kidding, of course. In this age of the Patriot Act, Black Site Detention Facilities, and free government housing in Gitmo, it would be incredibly stupid of me to admit that I am taking down pigeons with assault rifles. Before you know it, I’d have all sorts of 3-Letter government agencies crashing through my windows because if an American citizen were to exercise his 2nd Amendment rights to defend his home from the Pigeon Scourge, then the terrorists have clearly won.

No, I borrowed a CO2 powered pellet gun from a friend and treated my neighbors to the spectacle of an armed man running outside every fifteen minutes to shoot at his house. No way that could go wrong.

If I had opted for the assault rifle, the problem would have been over long ago. But having opted for the pellet gun, I had to accept certain trade-offs. Whereas the assault rifle would be properly sighted, the pellet gun is aimed primarily via astrolabe as far as I can tell. Oh, sure, it has sights on it. These are to indicate that the object you have sighted will not be hit. Everything else, yourself included, is fair game.

Ironically, the aim is so bad that this is the only way to guarantee that you won’t shoot yourself in the head.

Another trade-off is stopping power. An assault rifle has stopping power, whereas this pellet gun has giggle-power. Seriously, the little plastic pellets it fires make Tic Tacs seem like cop-killer rounds. Normally a pellet gun will come with a warning about the dangers of firing at someone’s face along with an exhortation to don protective eyewear. This pellet gun is so weak that they’ve modified the warning accordingly:

WARNING: DO NOT AIM… You know what? Fuck it. Go ahead and aim this directly at your eyeball. It’s not going to do anything.

Also, while assault rifles have round velocities measured in fps (feet per second), this pellet gun produces velocities in fph (feet per hour). You can fire at a pigeon, go inside to look at more Brazilian amputee fetish porn get a snack , come back out and still see the pigeon looking quizzically at this tiny white pellet that’s inching closer and closer to it. They’re not exactly scared shitless when you fire this thing, and not just because they’re constantly shitting. They really don’t get that you’re trying to hurt them. Or scare them, really, because you could fire these things at newborns without anything bad happening. [Legal Disclaimer: In some states it is a misdemeanor to fire pellet guns at newborns.]

Still, the pigeons find it unpleasant to have their two-legged shit-cleaner be able to make even indirect contact with them, so they fly off in a big, arcing path and you can practically hear the thought process going through their moronic fucking heads.

Pigeon: AUUUUGGGHHH! AUUUUGGGHHH! OH NO! Oh no! Oh, no. Oh. Ummm… Dum-dee-dum-dum-dum. It sure is a nice day out! Hey, you know what would be fun? To go roost on top of that house again! What a great idea!

And they circle right back and assume their spot on the house as if nothing had ever happened, which is almost true due to the lame fucking pellet gun I’m using. It has become a a war of attrition, which surprisingly, I seem to be winning. I went outside to make sure my roof was pigeon-free no less than four times during the writing of this post, and there is not a pigeon to be found. I’m pretty sure I killed them. It is possible for pigeons to laugh themselves to death, isn’t it?

(By the way, since these fucking pigeons have caused me enough grief without me having to go to jail over them, I called the local police department to ask if it was legal to shoot pigeons with a pellet gun on my own property. The answer was “Yes” said in a tone that was clearly meant to say, “Why would you not shoot pigeons every opportunity you have?” God bless our gun-loving boys in blue.)