<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=440 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=headlineblack style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 10px; PADDING-TOP: 5px">Poisoned Pigeons Falling From Sky Mar Texas City's Quadrangle Festival</TD></TR><TR><TD class=storytext style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 10px">Wednesday, September 13, 2006 TEXARKANA, Texas — Poisoned pigeons began nose-diving into pavement and dying on downtown sidewalks, marring the city's annual festival. Authorities cleaned up more than 25 sick or dead birds that apparently had eaten poisoned corn from the roof of a nearby bank branch. "The death of these pigeons was more than an unfortunate accident," local CapitalOne Bank President Lacy McMillen said in Tuesday's online edition of Texarkana Gazette. "It was not the intention of the bank to harm any of these birds." McMillen said the bank hired an exterminator to handle its pigeon problem after a bird entered the bank and defecated on a customer. The company hired, Anti-Pest Co. Inc. of Shreveport, La., said its goal with the treated corn was to sicken pigeons so they would leave the rooftop. Death was sometimes an unfortunate side effect, company president Jarrod Horton said. A similar pigeon control effort at a hospital in Schenectady, N.Y., led to a hazardous materials incident in July. Emergency workers spent hours searching the hospital grounds and putting dead birds in red hazardous-waste bags after an exterminator use a pesticide to get rid of pigeons on the roof. Fire Chief Robert Farstad had described the scene as birds "coming down like dive bombers." Vera Martin, working at Texarkana's weekend Quadrangle Festival, said the poisoning in the Texas-Arkansas border city sends a bad message to children. "I think it's cruelty to animals," she said. "What other animals could be killed in the process of doing this?" </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Works of art desecrated. Diseases running rampant. Malformed limbs. Cleaning services expensive. Properties unattractive. Nervous condition rising to the surface in exposed areas. Hit in the head by projectiles. Knocking people over or running into people in the act of trying to get away. Constant maintenance procedures underway. What am I talking about? How about the things that are associated with the pigeon population of San Francisco? Happens every day. Works of art such as statues are covered in pigeon crap. More and more droppings from pigeons are full of bacteria that can and has caused diseases. Overbreeding poisons the gene pool and most pigeons are born with missing claws or twisted legs. Because of droppings, clothing and buidings are having to be cleaned more frequently than normal and at a higher cost due to cause of cleaning. Buidlings such as the public library, city hall with the gold plated dome and just about every other building here can be seen to have a 'white coat' from the pigeons. Nervous conditions are caused by the pigeons in that you never know when you go out will you have to dodge droppings or not. Hit in the head by projectiles is caused by walking past a flock of the winged rats and they all fly up scared of something and can fly directly into your face as I have found out. Also in your avoidance of said rats you can run into people trying to get away from the path of the oncoming birds. Constant maintenance is cleaning, rebuilding or refurbishing the exteriors of buildings city-wide to get rid of nests, pigeon hangouts or droppings. Pigeons are nasty creatures. Overfeeding is a said cause of the pigeon population. So they post signs saying do not feed the pigeons. Whoa, glad they did that. Now no more pigeons. Right. Here in Liberal-Land they put up plastic barb pipe-cleaner looking things to discourage pigeons from sitting on some buildings. Though with a lot of pigeons coming to rest on that spot, the plastic gets broken or bent and then the pigeons land and crap. Poison corn? Not going to happen here. Electric jolts? Not going to happen. They are being discouraged to exist though nothing else is done to hamper or get rid of them. And for general information, Know what a pigeon uses to hold it's nest together? You got it, droppings. They lay down straw or such and then 'drop' it in place. Much akin to cementing. Don't you want some lovely pigeons?
