Mainly about hating pigeons. And the Chinese Communist Party.
Spent most of the morning wondering whether I should learn Chinese.
My guess is that by the end of the decade Armley will be a colonial outpost of the greater Chinese Empire and our local councillors will have been replaced by functionaries of the Chinese Communist Party. Which might not be a bad idea. At least the CCP might be able to do something about the pigeon problem round here.
We have an infestation on our street. Here they are, the rotten, vile, verminous, feathery fuckers.
One of our neighbours a few doors down insists on feeding them. As if pigeons can’t fend for themselves? Every morning he casts a bag of seed (I don’t know what the hell it is, some kind of feathery-fiendish crack cocaine) into the back street, and pigeons from far and wide flock to gorge themselves on the tuppence-a-bag bounty. Tuppence a bag is obviously a ‘60s film reference (is it Mary Poppins? Clancy will know) – even at Wilcos the stuff costs a few quid these days, and I do wonder if he hasn’t got better things to do with his money. Oh, I don’t know, something like making Chinese lanterns with glued together twenty quid notes, liberally doused with lighter fuel, and launched in an armada of airborne bulls-eyes from his back yard. I know that’s ecologically inconsiderate, but what’s the odd incinerated corn field compared to a street full of manky feathers and spattered pigeon poop? It’s like they are using the back street as target practice.
I hate, loathe and abhor pigeons. I checked the council website over the weekend, wanting to know if they were still considered vermin, and if so could we call in the exterminators? I don’t care how they are dealt with – although my preferred method would be flame thrower as long as they let me have a go – and poison, pistol shot or clubbing with a blunt instrument are all fine by me. I’m not asking to watch – and I’ll certainly not be uploading the video, I’m not that sort of sick! I really just want rid, simple as that.
The council website is, shall we say, non-committal. They only take a pigeon infestation seriously if you are a commercial business and can pay for preventative measures. It doesn’t say anything about what to do if you live next door to some twat who feeds the ugly, disease ridden, pestilential, little bastards.
But it doesn’t say anything about not taking them out with a crossbow either. Or a hatchet. And there seems to be nothing preventing me from spiking them through the head with a javelin (if only I could get my hands on a javelin.)
I may have mentioned I don’t care for pigeons.
Would anyone miss them, I wonder?
It’s true – and I have tweeted this observation on several occasions, with photographic evidence – that most Sundays, around 11am, a white Transit van pulls up across the street and two older chaps (who look like extras from Last of the Summer Wine, sorry if I’m stereotyping here but they started it) enter the back street with a bag of corn and a determined glint in their eyes. They position themselves just outside the back gate. They carefully spread their bait into the street in a windscreen wiper motion. They calmly wait as the birds come massing to partake of their free lunch. They whisper together, pointing at an individual feathery specimen. One guy – he normally wears a blue checked woollen jacket, while his partner wears a plain brown grocers smock – inches forward, looking toward the distance, whistling nonchalantly, until he gets within snatching range of his intended victim. Then, in a split second motion that must have been decades in the practice, he whips a hand out of his jacket pocket, expertly seizes the body of an unsuspecting pigeon, and places the startled bird upside down in a back pocket.
This would make great telly. Great telly if you are the sort of person who enjoyed One Man and his Dog, and I am such a person. I find these guys and their extraordinarily refined pigeon poaching skills absolutely entrancing.
I do have one small, niggling worry about them though. The only pigeons they ever abduct are the purest white imaginable.
Perhaps they are part of a pigeon eugenics program? Squab supremacists?
One of my favourite writers ever, Robert Benchley, wrote an essay on his feelings about pigeons, and I couldn’t put it better myself. I reread it this afternoon as I fantasised about putting in my application to join the local branch of the Chinese Communist Party and putting forward my proposal to deal with the problem. They’ll get this sorted.
I can’t wait for the back street to be pigeon free. It’ll be a great leap forward. A cultural revolution. I’ve heard the paramount leader feels the same way about pigeons as me.