“It all started with the pigeons…” my wife will say sadly to the police officer, as they bundle me into the back of a white van.
“No, They started it! THEY STARTED IT!” I scream.
(“Watch your head, sir.”)
“He’s been a bit… off, since he left his job.” A fat tear slides slowly down her cheek.
Behind me, the marina burns…
I asked Chat-GPT if there were times when pigeons had been implicated in large scale disasters.
NYSE Trading Floor Shutdown (1980s): In the mid-1980s, the New York Stock Exchange had an incident where pigeons roosting near an air vent released droppings that contaminated the trading floor’s air conditioning system. Trading was briefly halted due to concerns over sanitation and the potential health risks posed by the bird waste.
Pigeon Excrement Damaging Infrastructure: In many cities, the acidic properties of pigeon droppings have corroded buildings, bridges, and statues. Notably, parts of the Minnesota State Capitol and the Cologne Cathedral in Germany faced major repairs partly due to pigeon droppings. These instances, while not immediate disasters, required costly restorations and structural reinforcements.
Power Outages and Equipment Damage: Pigeons have caused multiple blackouts by nesting in or around electrical substations. A notable case occurred in Chicago in 2009, when a pigeon flew into equipment, causing a power outage that affected 11,000 people. Similar incidents have happened elsewhere, with pigeons nesting in electrical transformers and causing short circuits, even leading to small explosions.
London’s Trafalgar Square Cleanup: Pigeons once overran Trafalgar Square, causing sanitation issues and health risks. The costs associated with controlling and cleaning up after them reached hundreds of thousands of pounds, leading the city to ban feeding them.
It couldn’t really provide sources for these, so they could be urban legends. Regardless, when a flock decides to move onto a boat, they can wreak a surprising amount of damage in a short time. I did just start a sabbatical. One of my projects was going to be to add an electrical outlet to the kids’ room (AC on a boat is trickier that you might think. You can’t just daisy chain the outlets using wire nuts.). But, as is often the case when I have a “nice to have” project lined up, it gets sidelined by a “have to do.”
I first noticed the infestation when I lowered the dinghy and found a smear of droppings. They were roosting on the aft edge of the upper deck. I’d seen them roosting on other boats. There were a number of deterrent systems in place, including a 24/7 recording of some kind of raptor playing from the Selene across the fairway. “No problem,” I thought. I got some garden netting from the hardware store and the Pigeon Discourager Mk. I was born.
Of course, they just flew in the side. Enter, The Pigeon Discourager Mk. II – A giant slinky from the kids’ toy bin. It seemed easy to install and remove and, when entangled with the garden netting, would completely block the area under the dinghy.
This worked. And, it made the pigeons mad. Their counterstrike was swift and brutal. They moved into the dinghy itself.
At this point, I did what any frustrated boat owner would do: I threw money at the problem. Introducing Sir Reginald, the Pigeon Discourager Mk. III – only $90 from my local hardware store. According to the Internet, you can’t just use stationary deterrents. They need to move. Sir Reginald is solar powered with a motion detector. He turns his head when he sees something! I also picked up some of that “holographic” (i.e. shiny) bird tape.
Surly, with Sir Reginald on duty, no harm could come to us.
You know what happened.
At this point, I was getting better at cleaning up. I picked up a scoop for cleaning gutters and kind of just hosed everything down. I needed some time to regroup. Without a new plan, I just went crazy with the holographic tape. I also turned the boat around in the slip so the stern was facing the dock. Mk IV was more like Mk 3.5.
This time, Reginald did us proud and defended the dinghy. But, the pigeon forces regrouped for a flanking attack on the flybridge. Their brutality was devastating. The horror.
I’d gone up-budget. Now was time to go down-market. I went to the dollar store and bought $5 worth of sparkly party favors. Also, since stringing the tape across where they landed seemed to work, I doubled down on that and made Reggie a banner at the location of his victory. The Pigeon Discourager Mk V mostly made me look desperate and sad.
Also, at this point, I was a pigeon-shit-cleaning-up ninja. Pro-tip: use a squeegee and a dust pan with a rubberized lip. I was able to scrape up 90% of the shit in 10 minutes and then just wash the boat as normal.
Whether this worked, or I just won a war of attrition, the pigeons decided to go crap on someone else’s boat. This is lucky for them, since I had my top scientists working on a manhattan project: a dinghy cover.
What did I learn?
- Humor continues to be the immune system of the soul. Without it, I would have been lost to despair.
- You can’t get rid of pigeons. You can only annoy them enough that they find someplace less annoying. You can never win this war – but maybe hold on to a fragile peace.
- There is no deterrent that “works”. Different flocks learn to fear or ignore them based on experience. So, as you go through Internet posts that seem bimodal: “worked perfectly!” vs. “junk – didn’t work at all”, they are both telling the truth. You need to find the thing that the birds in your area are afraid of.
- Some people say rubber snakes work around here, as long as you move them around regularly. Makes sense, since we don’t actually have a lot of snakes up here. They should work until everyone uses them and the birds get used to them.
- Much like in real war, any shred of compassion I had for my enemy was lost with their escalating brutality. I was fully prepared to put mouse traps in the base of the dinghy. The only good pigeon is a dead pigeon. This is what war does to people.
In an attempt at recovering my humanity from generational hate, I’ll end with the story of a good pigeon.
Cher Ami once flew to deliver a message of troops being grievously ambushed by German armies and taking active fire. They were in dire need of support. Cher Ami was released and upon taking flight, was spotted by the German army, and was shot in the leg soon right after take-off. The leg was completely severed by the shot but hung from a tendon. The tendon retained the canister that carried the life-saving message. The shot ripped through the leg, entered the breast, and blinded the bird in one eye. Cher Ami fell to the ground after the shot.
In great pain, the bird lifted again and continued his flight for 25 miles to deliver his message. That flight saved the lives of the remaining ambushed 194 soldiers known as “The Lost Battalion.”