Friday, October 27, 2006

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.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh yes. The pigeons have actually trained people to feed them. Now exactly who is on the top of the food chain?

October 28, 2006 10:20 PM  
Blogger GB Hoyt said...

So should we start selling tee-shirts that say "Pigeon Control is finding your roost", ala "gun control is hitting your target??
I got dibs on 10% of profits! Daddy needs a Diascope...

November 02, 2006 12:10 PM  

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