Pigeon (and sister) update

I got a chance to talk to my sister in Boston. She clarified that she's got a soft-top Jeep so doesn't bother locking her doors. "If you can operate a zipper, you can break into my car. If you've mastered that Fisher-Price™ learning toy, you can break into my car." As for forgetting her purse, et.al., that's what a bottle of wine will do to your judgment. And she went home with a friend, making her not so much the wanton slut she might have first appeared to be. And her ex-boyfriend had identified himself to the police as her fiancé, hoping they'd share more information that way. When they told Amy to "call your fiancé, he's worried sick about you" she responded, "Great! Did he happen to leave a name?" That's the women of our family, always making light of an otherwise deadly serious situation.

Now, the pigeons. As far as we could tell, the babies had both grown up and were still making themselves comfortable up there, making them the avian equivalents of 27-year-olds living in their parents' basement. MyFriendDeb showed me an article that discouragingly confirmed they tend to hang around long after developing survival skills. I became resolute. I wanted my fucking balcony back. Besides, Tery thinks she's developing allergies or something from all the guano out there. Filthy, disgusting, bloodyminded animals. Gerry had generously offered to come by, take care of the problem without giving me the specifics, but I'm still living with the aftermath of the Great Guppy Massacre of 1997 (there were HUNDREDS of them. Was I supposed to find a good home for each one individually?) Tery, who no doubt would prefer spending the day watching baseball, complained that the birds hadn't left yet. I pointed out that if we waited for them to politely agree to leave, it might never happen.

We planned to put up chicken wire fencing. First I scared away one (I think the baby girl) but Tery insisted I pull down all the pots to make sure. And guess what? THERE WERE MORE FUCKING BABIES. These guys waste NO time gettin' their freak on. These were much, much smaller, barely out of the shell. This is exactly what I was afraid of happening. I had no intention of putting up with three more weeks of feedings, a loud and honestly fairly violent activity that only becomes more and more frequent the bigger they grow. Tery carried the nesting pot downstairs to find a new home while the nuclear family watched balefully from the neighboring roof. Tery fretted over them, but hey -- they're wild animals. Adapt or die, that's the law, baby. It's not like they're an endangered species. Even MyFriendDeb, an animal lover of such intensity she makes Dr. Doolittle look like a logging company CEO, agrees with me. And if I seemed excessively gleeful to finally be rid of them, my defense is Tery doesn't have to listen to the throes of vomiting as the babies are fed all day like I do.

For about 20 minutes we wrestled with the fencing, first using bent nails (Tery's idea) then those little wedge brackets you put up Christmas lights with (my idea), both of which required hammering at impossible angles and almost certainly would have resulted in divorce if I didn't insist on running back to the store for a heavy duty staple gun. As I suspected, this completed the entire job in another 20 minutes and was actually quite fun (anyone need anything stapled? Just let me know. I'm your man....in a manner of speaking). Now it looks like we live in a penitentiary (the countdown has begun to when the Alcoholic, who historically just cannot abide any kind of eyesore on other peoples' balconies, complains to someone) but is extremely effective. See for yourself:

These pigeons would love nothing more than to peck my eyes out and feed them to their new spawn

These are very disappointed pigeons. If you look closely, you might be able to see them drawing up the contract on my life.

As an added bonus, just as the sun went down they seemed to FINALLY be taking notice of Tracey's balcony. Oh, that would be SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET.