Feathers Fly Over Track’s Pigeon Attack

Dead pigeons by the dozens were tumbling from the sky around San Mateo and neighboring Foster City and the local humane society was at first puzzled, then upset when it found out why.

After checking, officials discovered that Bay Meadows Race Track had poisoned the birds in a “last resort” effort to protect its stabled race horses from catching pigeon-related diseases.

Officials at the track in San Mateo said about 3,500 pigeons flocked around the stables, and some expensive horses had become sick with salmonella transmitted by pigeon droppings that got into hay and feed.

About 150 pigeons ate poisoned feed set out by a pest control firm, flew off and started plummeting earthward in San Mateo and Foster City. But the poisoning scared off almost all the other pigeons “and now there are very few there,” Steve LeBlanc of the pest control firm said at midweek.

Track spokesman Romain Roberts said the pigeons “were roosting above the stalls and their droppings were falling into the hay and the feed.

“More and more horses--some with a value of $100,000 or greater--were getting sick. The horsemen’s association and the vet said something had to be done.”

LeBlanc said putting out the poisoned corn was a “last resort.”

“We’d tried everything else,” he said. “We’d trap them, tag them and take them a long ways away and let them go. And what they’d do was fly right back to the track because they’re pigeons and that’s what pigeons do. Loud noises like (blank) gunshots wouldn’t work because that would spook the horses more than the birds.”

Humane Society Director Kim Sturla said her group was “pretty darned upset about it” after counting about 150 poisoned pigeons.

Sturla said the group believed that some alternative method of ridding the track of diseased birds would have worked.

“What they did was perfectly legal,” she said, “but whether it was right is a whole other issue.”