Kill a pigeon in the city and you will be arrested! (Pittsburgh: homes, rooftop)

[Benzman66]

A city ordinance prohibits the capture or harm of any wild birds. Remember that when walking amongst the pigeons that roam en masse on downtown sidewalks.


https://triblive.com/local/four-char...burgh-pigeons/

[Doowlle34]

Anyone recall, back in the 1980s, when storied, local TV anchorman, Bill Burns, got in some hot water by making an offhand suggestion, in a bad attempt at humor, that the downtown Pittsburgh pigeons should be sent off to starving Ethiopians?

[Reggiezz]

Better arrest the falcons and eagles. It will give a new meaning to the term "jailbird".

[Copanut]

Bill Burns is smiling.

[Boomchee]

Glorified rats with wings...Growing up we used pellet guns. More humane.

[ElijahAstin]

So everyone thinks it’s appropriate to keep pigeons off of your rooftop by baiting them with poisonous feed? That doesn’t seem excessive, not to mention psychotic?

And here I was, thinking that installing spikes was the way to go.

[Doowlle34]

Spikes sounds like a good strategy. My personal feathered bête noire is the Canada goose, and in particular, their profligate defecatory practices on local river trails. I haven't resorted to violence yet, although I have composed a short parody, using the tune of the Ramones' "Beat on the Brat" (wherein clever readers may have surmised, I have swapped in the word, "Goose" for "brat"), to convey my feelings toward these waterfoul [sic].

[Pughnose]

Originally Posted by ElijahAstin

So everyone thinks it’s appropriate to keep pigeons off of your rooftop by baiting them with poisonous feed? That doesn’t seem excessive, not to mention psychotic?

And here I was, thinking that installing spikes was the way to go.

Out of curiosity, do you consider the use of ant baits and mouse traps to be "psychotic"? I wouldn't poison pigeons, but more out of concern for the beasts who might eat them than because my mental hygiene fits your preferences.

[ElijahAstin]

Originally Posted by Pughnose

Out of curiosity, do you consider the use of ant baits and mouse traps to be "psychotic"? I wouldn't poison pigeons, but more out of concern for the beasts who might eat them than because my mental hygiene fits your preferences.

I don’t, although I prefer to catch and release mice alive whenever possible.

But the big difference is that we set ant and mouse traps in our homes. Pigeons are not home invaders. They fly out in the world, and this situation was no exception. Placing spikes on the building, or employing some other means of making the building unattractive to pigeons, is the appropriate solution. It’s also the more effective solution, because short of perpetrating a pigeon shoah they’re going to keep on roosting on the building, and going through bags and bags of poison feed, at great expense to the property management company and the horror of passersby seeing dead pigeons everywhere, indefinitely.

There is something very wrong with people who go out of their way to be cruel to animals. It’s no coincidence that the great majority of our most notorious serial killers started torturing animals before “graduating” to human victims.

[guy2073]

When i was young i worked for a company that did restoration work on old buildings, there is a product called avitrol that is mixed with corn. It causes a reaction in the first pigion that eats it and all the other pigions flee the area. It is cruel to that one bird in my opinion but it saves from killing hundreds of pigions that are nesting in a building or church tower.