What began as a minor skirmish has now turned into a war. Lee vs. the pigeons. The battles are played out nightly outside our home.
A while back, Lee noticed that pigeons were roosting in our eaves. They didn’t really bother me, but for some reason, they drove Lee nuts. He would scrounge around for a stick and hurl it at them, sending them flapping away.
As the weeks passed and the pigeons returned nightly, Lee grew more incensed. We’d be sitting down to dinner, and suddenly you could hear the pigeons cooing outside the dining room window – and my sweet, gentle husband’s face would suddenly turn rigid and his eyes would turn cold and his blood may have even turned to ice.
He found his old BB gun, and loaded up. He’d spend a little time each evening in the driveway, shooting at the pigeons. It was disturbing watching him walk out our front door with a realistic looking gun – an eerie look of evil anticipation on his face. I’d hear him outside shooting – laughing – shooting – laughing. I was afraid our neighbors would call the cops.
The pigeons started getting on my nerves too because their droppings were collecting in the driveway. That’s just nasty. We hung a plastic owl in the eaves to scare away the pigeons. They weren’t scared.
When we would pull into the driveway in our car and Lee didn’t have his gun handy, he had a favorite stick he would throw at the birds. His aim continued to improve, and most nights he could actually hit the pigeons. But one recent night, he launched the stick at them – and it didn’t come down. Lee was sure they’d caught it with their beaks and kept it. Score one for the pigeons.
Finally last weekend we decided to put chicken wire around some of the eaves to keep them away. While I was up on the ladder, I found the stick wedged in the eaves – as if the pigeons shoved it there for safe-keeping. I recovered it.
Unfortunately, the chicken wire hasn’t done the trick yet. The pigeons moved to the other side of the house. So we put chicken wire up there too, but not around all the eaves. So they moved to the eaves we left open, of course.
During lunch today, Lee was in the yard on that side of the house chasing away the pigeons. Then minutes later as he turned to walk inside, he says a stick fell from the sky and hit him on the head. Score two for the pigeons.
I guess they could be hitting us with something far worse. And it may eventually escalate to that, because we’re not giving up on the fight to keep them away. We will prevail.