Pigeon Wars

This article from the New York Times Magazine (may require registration, but it’s simple and free) about holistic approaches to controlling pigeon populations is really quite bizarre. I loved the characterization of one segment of the pigeon-feeding public as crazed older women who resort to working as "phone-sex operators and prostitutes" to earn money to buy bird seed because they have been transformed by the pigeons through some magical co-evolutionary process into their "senseless disciples." That's hilarious!

But on further searching, I see that PiCAS (the Pigeon Control Advisory Service) is actually for real; they even have a supporter in the U.S. And a Dr. Haag-Wackernagel really has conducted scientific studies on the control of pigeons in Basel, Switzerland, and published his results in such outlets as Nature and the Wildlife Society Bulletin.