Invasion of the pigeons
Open warfare with the wrong enemy
We are at war with the pigeons and the mother-in-law has become violent.
She is engaged in battle with one particular pigeon.
The rest of us are battling battalions of the things.
Pigeon feathers are scattered all over the place. Clouds heavily infused with pigeon blood darken the sky.
Water pistols have been deployed. Balls are kicked with intent to kill. There is much banging on windows and shouting at all hours of the day and night. The wife claps and bangs pots to scare them off. Spare bricks that were used to build the mansion have gone missing. I swear I have seen a broom flying through the air on several occasions, but that may be a result of severe sleep deprivation.
The mother-in-law throws screwed up toffee wrappers at the tree where her nemesis likes to perch its chunky body. I fear that she may be eyeing up the water hose as her next weapon of choice.
I have tried to scare them off by playing recorded radio and TV interviews of the England football manager Gareth Southgate at full blast.
The children are on high alert. They wake up in a cold sweat, wondering if the pigeons have managed to get into their bedrooms. I get up in the dead of night as well and peer out of the window to see what the enemy is up to. Blurry shadows of creatures that may or may not be pigeons (biology has never been a strong suit of mine) flicker and scamper across the street. Armed only with paper straws (the most useless invention known to mankind) and my lung capacity, I shoot frozen peas at anything that looks remotely pigeon-like. I violently twitch in bed as pigeons invade my mind. The nightmares cause me to sweat all of the fluid out of my body. I am severely dehydrated and have to drink litres of beer to avoid hospitalisation when I wake up.
A neighbour is building a new bunker in his back garden. Another neighbour has left the country in an old caravan with the wife to go to France. I doubt they will ever return.
The neighbour across the road who fought in the Boer War has dusted down his rifle and thinks rationing has returned. He ventures out of the house only after midnight, in full camouflage gear.
Two doors down, the neighbours there can only cope by chain smoking and drinking cans of gin and tonic as they rush the children to school. The rest of the cul-de-sac’s residents have had estate agents around to value their properties.
Basil — the rogue cat, deceiver of men, bird killer, sofa scratcher, human bed seeker — approaches the house with such trepidation that he may drop dead from a nervous breakdown at any point.
The newts are multiplying at such a fast rate that they could soon overwhelm the pond. They fear their species is under threat from the pigeons (do pigeons eat newts?!?!?! — Ed).
The hedgehog has disappeared off the face of the planet.
Our entire local habitat is on the verge of collapse.
I am surprised that the police are not here. But then I remember that many of them are sadly (and no doubt reluctantly) too busy either a) scanning the internet to stop people from upsetting snowflake woke social justice warriors or b) making sure that nobody hurts the poor Just Stop Oil protestors when they i) prevent people from going about their everyday business and ii) damage important cultural artefacts.
The local General Election candidates have all promised to set up expensive quangos, conduct urgent reviews and deploy the army if necessary, after taxing us out of house and home to combat the scourge of pigeons. They all agree that the solution must be based on far more government control and interference. And we should all get on our knees and thank them for it. They also blame the pigeon invasion on traditional family values, social media bots, Brexit, cigars, terrorists, farmers, meat-eaters, skate boarders, North Korea-Russia-Iran-China-Iceland (what? — Ed), the weather, Big Foot, tennis players, red wine, Gaza, traffic, Israel, cigarettes, Gadaffi (isn’t he dead? — Ed), Gareth Southgate and a lack of funding for the NHS.
In fact, come to think of it, they say, it’s clear that the only real solution is to shut down the economy and lock everyone in their homes until the pigeons disappear. The quangos and reviews will obviously reach this conclusion after months of meetings and report writing. Because communist-style totalitarian lockdowns, which end up ruining everything and solving nothing, are still all the rage, didn’t you know?
The mother-in-law and wife started all this by putting out enough bird seed and nuts to feed a sumo wrestler for a day. They deny this. But the facts speak for themselves. We were not being attacked by the pigeons prior to turning the garden into a mass food bank for every bird and squirrel within a 100-mile radius of the mansion.
All of this fighting is futile and pointless anyway, a bit like World War I, which of course, the politicians at the time idiotically called the “war to end all wars”.
Pigeons should be embraced and treasured, not treated as the vermin of the sky.
I came across (you mean you searched for it on the interweb to bulk out this blog post — Ed) a study of pigeons in urban areas recently that had this to say:
”Due to their wide range and their integration into urban ecosystems […] pigeons have a major role in the cycling of nutrients and minerals, which contributes to shaping the urban habitat around them […] this makes pigeons an urban keystone species. While this may seem like a bold claim […] pigeons contribute to trophic levels both as primary consumers and and prey for urban raptors.
“Changes in the pigeon’s population can be used as an assessment of environmental conditions, and a way to connect local environments. In many ways, the pigeon is as urban as people are and may be our modern canary.
“Pigeons have the potential to serve as a gateway species for scientists to explore the relationship people have with their local environment, and promote science and conservation.”
I guess what the boffins are saying is pretty simple: Pigeons are a great way to measure the health of city and town life.
And right now, for us, the signal they are sending is clear: This could escalate into Armageddon.
It is time to raise the white flag.
Progress report:
The Anchorite, my latest novella, has had its first edits. I am proofreading and editing it again.
I am about to start my next novel and novella. Watch this space (for about 5 years).
Take it easy. And thanks for reading.