We have a history. I don't like them and they don't like me. Much like the results of my futile childhood attempts to interact with horses, my fear and annoyance seems only to amplify their bad behavior and general distaste for me. That's right, I also don't like horses much.
But horses are pretty and majestic and so I'll let them live on their farms or in open meadows or wherever; pigeons are filthy and stupid, eat anything, shit everywhere, and have a propensity towards dive-bombing my head. On at least three occasions, I have narrowly escaped getting a face full of high-velocity pigeon. Once I ducked so late in the game that the stupid thing grazed my hair. I tried not to think about where it had been.
My latest battle, though, has to do with excrement. Let me lay in a little background for you. The GD and I live in a large apartment complex (ha, you thought I was going to say 'large apartment') that's comprised of four five-story buildings surrounding a courtyard. Because the apartment is not big and it's built with maximum Irish efficiency, our washing machine is under the microwave in the kitchen (leaving us exactly one lower cupboard for trash and no drawers), and (as in many European homes) there is no dryer.
None of these things are particularly problematic. We keep the silverware in a tray on top of the microwave, we squeeze in when one person is doing dishes and the other wants something from the (counter-height) fridge, and we conveniently have a small balcony and drying rack for laundry. Again, no complaints.
Our courtyard (besides being a daytime hang-out for kids and nighttime location for loud drunks) attracts a particularly precious combination of gulls and pigeons. Particularly at night, the seabirds seem to fly in from the coast in Hitchcockian numbers, screeching at a level that almost drowns out the thumping base from the bottom corner apartment. This is annoying and a little alarming (I always think of Jessica Tandy and my own impending doom at having left the window open), but it is still not what drives me crazy.
I have probably done laundry about 6 times since I have arrived here, and 3 of those times (including the first day I was here), a bird has shat on my drying clothes out on the balcony. The first time, it was actually the GD's stuff that I had washed, but the second it was my jeans which take forever to dry and I was personally offended. The third time was yesterday. I had washed all of the bedding and painstakingly found places and creative ways to hang everything up so that it would have a fighting chance at drying before bed time, and just when the sheets (outside) were nearly dry and I was about to switch out the comforter cover (hanging on balcony door), I witnessed a pigeon stop by just long enough to take a big crap on one of the sheet. The bottom sheet. The one we need to sleep on so we're not directly on the mattress. I cursed my luck and threw it back in the washing machine.
The thing that really drives me nuts is that the GD was living here a month before I moved in, and this never happened to him. He has (of course) done laundry since I arrived, and it's still always my loads that get dumped on. This is just like the three or four times that a horse, beloved by and loyal to my sister, tried to throw me as a child.
The whole thing leads me to believe that I have some kind of anti-Snow White complex. Come to think of it, all of those Disney princesses loved wild animals. Sleeping Beauty had those bird friends who'd dress up as a prince for her so she'd have a dancing partner in the woods; Jasmine had an effing tiger for a pet; and no one would even hang out with Cinderella except for some very talented singing/talking mice. I think maybe wild animals don't like me because I don't buy into all that being-rescued-by-a-prince crap-- I think they don't like me because I'm a feminist!
Well, pigeons, if it's my principles you're after, I guess you'll just have to keep crapping all over my laundry, because I'm not backing down. You just keep coming around with your tiny little heads and beady eyes, I will keep thinking about (but not actually testing) how much Raid it would take to get rid of you. And I will not sing to you or dress you up as my boyfriend just so we can have a quick waltz around the balcony; I'll be inside with the windows shut, reading Jezebel.
Not Raid. Alka Seltzer. They will explode, and they will die. I bet it's just the boy ones who shit on your stuff because you're trying to turn the girl ones on to women's suffrage. Pigeons can't vote.
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