I Am Pigeon Man (part 2)

by Pat Devine

Over the course of two years, pigeons had taken up residence in an ever-expanding area of the apartment crawl space atop my ceiling. Their time spent creating noise and the volume level of that noise also increased throughout that period. I’d occasionally complain to management and make suggestions about what needed to be done, but while pigeons had shown themselves to be a species that worked well together and tried new strategies where earlier ones had failed, I could not say the same for my own kind. Management’s efforts were almost non-existent. My efforts to get them to do something never varied. I applied the same strategies and was easily discouraged when they failed each time. I started to think that pigeons might just be better built for this kind of battle. Then on a morning in early March I shed my genetic code and began an odyssey that was more pigeon than human. I was not going to be denied. That crawl space would be mine.

It was 6:30 on a Sunday morning. I was awake in bed, wrestling violently with pillows and covers. Was there any way to position my head comfortably in between enough material to drown out the noise? No. The sound coming from atop my ceiling was akin to a brawl between two clumsy drunks on a peanut shelled bar floor with an audience of high-pitched chicks (actual baby birds). After a crash that sounded like something was going to come through the ceiling in my kitchen I threw off my covers and did what any lunatic without a weapon does. I sat for an hour and composed an e-mail.

The e-mail was addressed to Jennifer, my contact person at the management company. It was a polite but stern screed that clearly laid out my demands to her and served as a declaration that I was not going away. If getting them to do something about this meant I had to make it a full-time job then so be it. In a polite tone and gentle language I made the following points and demands:

• This has gone on way too long.
• I had become very concerned for my health. How healthy could it be to live with a flock of pigeons and their filth?
• We were past the point of band-aids and half-measures.
• The whole space needed to be cleaned out so that it was free of birds and all of their filth. Then and only then should they block access points.
• Because this problem was obviously being lost in the chain of command I wanted one person responsible for fixing this. I wanted him to meet with me so that I could explain the problem to him, what needed to be done, and if it wasn’t done, then I could deal with him.
• The pigeons needed to feel that the area was inhospitable. Therefore, after eliminating their homes and blocking their access, further preventative measures were required, such as putting up spikes and fake owls.

I also left a long voicemail with the maintenance department that sounded more like a 911 call. “Help me, please!”

Jennifer’s e-mail response was everything I’d come to expect from her. She felt my pain and asked for patience. She went on to say, “Pigeons are very smart.”

Patience? Pigeons are smart?

Patience at one time truly was a virtue. It’s still a nice thing to display when teaching a child math or conversing with a person who stutters. But patience today is weakness. It’s demanded of the aggrieved in an effort to elicit total submission at the hands of tyrannical stupidity and laziness. What action was I supposed to be patient for? Shall I wait until the pigeons are using the front door to my apartment? Will we spring to action then? They hadn’t even covered the holes the pigeons were using and they wanted me to be patient!

Of course, I never responded with such emotion. I was always calm and polite. I made sure to express to Jennifer how much I appreciated her attention to this and that I knew it wasn’t her fault—something that seemed important to her.

A couple days later a maintenance guy brought over two traps.

Jennifer seemed genuinely excited with this. I was incredulous. It was so clear this would not work, for a myriad of reasons. Jennifer would not be dissuaded, though; explaining that their “experts” had told them this was the way to go. Never mind that a simple search on the Internet will tell you this was most definitely not the way to get rid of pigeons. She assured me the traps would be checked in a couple of days and then moved to a different area.

Even though I knew this wouldn’t work I remained patient ... okay, submissive. After two weeks with no prizes I wrote Jennifer for the progress report she’d promised me. This was her response:

 

Hi Patrick,

Freddy (the maintenance supervisor) informed me that since we’ve put the traps up (2 weeks ago) we have not caught one pigeon but they do check the traps every other day. Tomorrow when they check them, they will move the traps to a different location, which is what our pest control company told us to do with any traps.

I hope that you are getting some rest and again sorry for the inconvenience but we are doing our best. Pigeons are smart and they are very hard to get rid of.

If you should have any further questions or concerns, please let me know.

Thank you,

Jennifer.

 

My response:

 

Jennifer,

Thank you for your update.

With all due respect to your pest control expert the trap they have set is laughable. It’s located in an area where I have never seen a pigeon - on top of one of the car ports - sitting right in the middle. The food that is placed in those "traps" is eaten quickly by smaller birds. If by some miracle a pigeon ever was captured in one of these cages there are still many, many birds to go. And then should that miracle occur there’s nothing to say other pigeons won’t come here and call this home.

[I went on to reiterate the same things about what needed to be done that I’d written in previous e-mails. I concluded with the following:]

I know you’re doing what you can from your end but this has gone on a very long time. That the maintenance people’s response to all of this is to put a cage up above a car-port across the parking lot does not seem at all to me like a serious attempt to fix this problem. Aside from the nuisance and very real health concerns I have about this I’m also beginning to feel like I’m being taken advantage of. I have lived here five and a half years. I’ve been about as low maintenance as I can imagine a renter for that length of time being. I’ve always paid my rent on time. My original rent here I believe was $525 a month. This June it will be going up to $787. By my calculation that is $262. Put another way, a 49.9% increase in under six years.

None of that seems right.

Sincerely,

Patrick Devine

 

Jennifer’s response was the usual. She’s trying hard, she’s knows I’m frustrated; they’re doing everything they can. She also mentioned that the city of Glendale sets my rent. It turns out I live in what the city considers an “affordable unit.” For the next eleven days I monitored the lonely bird “traps” that were never moved and never checked. No one ever came to speak with me. Nothing more was done. The only power it seemed I had was my rent check, but withholding that would only motivate management to evict me, not the pigeons. But Jennifer had given me an idea. If the city set my rent, then maybe they’d be interested in what I was paying for.

It was time to get the city involved.