Glendale’s Pigeon Flap Is for the Birds : Messy Fowl Are No Longer Sitting Ducks but City Needs a Plan That Will Fly

In the annals of so-called animal rights (some would say the outrageously overblown annals), few could have anticipated much interest in the plight of the pigeon. Its name, for example, denotes many things, none of them positive. Human pigeons are easily deceived. Stool pigeons can’t keep their mouths shut. We hate to be pigeonholed (labeled), and, of course, there are the pigeon-hearted (cowards).

So, leave it to the city of Glendale to come up with a plan so distasteful that it caused folks to rise to the defense of these dung-bombers, the same birds that have been likened to rats with wings. City officials said it would be OK to stage a “coo d’etat,” so to speak, by shoving pigeons into plastic bags and hooking the sacks up to vehicle exhaust pipes.

Those otherwise outraged by piles of bird poop in downtown Glendale soon denounced this “fowl play.” A Washington, D.C.-based animal rights group noted that the exhaust would “burn their eyes.” Well, yes it would, among other things.

Suitably chastened, Glendale city officials are seeking other solutions and now insist that, well, bird murdering will be a last resort.

Answers, however, may be hard to come by. One idea, for example, would involve the spiking of pigeon corn feed with a birth-control substance. Complaints about this plan can no doubt be expected from people who believe that young pigeons would not have been thinking about sex in the first place if no one had mentioned birth control.

One East Coast city tried lining its more precious sites with faux falcons and hawks. But the pigeons regarded them as eminently comfortable perches--even pigeons get suspicious if a hawk hasn’t moved a feather in weeks or months.

Still, Glendale’s guano problem is severe, and the city must act soon, lest someone accuse it of being pigeon-livered (timid).