I Am Pigeon Man: part 4
by Pat Devine
part 1 | part 2 | part 3 || part 5
I’d kept a cool head, but I was beginning to lose it. The noise and filth from the pigeons occupying the crawlspace above my apartment had been driving me mad. My inability to motivate my apartment’s management to remove the pests was killing me. After getting the city of Glendale involved, management increased their activities without actually doing what was required. They had finally blocked holes the pigeons used to get inside, but they didn’t clear out any of the filth, nests, and eggs that had accumulated for close to two years. Worse yet, there were now live birds trapped up there. After management’s most recent sorry effort I’d written an e-mail to them and the city saying that once again, the problem had not been fixed. Jennifer, the woman at the management office, wrote back to say it was her understanding that the job had been completed. She suggested we meet. I was furious. Here’s my entire e-mail response:
Jennifer,
They most certainly DID NOT clean up the waste.
They did clean outside but again MY PROBLEM IS THE CRAWLSPACE IN BETWEEN THE ROOF AND MY CEILING. My ceiling is the pigeons’ floor. It has been occupied by pigeons for a long, long time now.
In a recent e-mail you wrote that this has been as frustrating for you as for me. I understand that you have been bothered by this because it has lingered for you but I can guarantee you that you are not nearly as frustrated by this as I am. Unfortunately, I only started keeping a record of our correspondence a couple of months ago but I know this has been going on well over a year, maybe two. This problem has affected my sleep. This problem has affected my ability to concentrate on anything from work to simply watching television. This problem has embarrassed me as guests will stop whatever they are doing when they hear something directly above their head and ask, “what is that?” When I tell them they’re pigeons the response 4 out of 5 times is “eewwwww.” This problem very well may be affecting my health and this problem has cost me hours and hours spent e-mailing, telephoning, and talking about this. Despite all of this, the words of advice your company has given over this long period of time has been to be patient—as though I have not been the most patient person in the world with regards to this.
You sent me an e-mail the other day expressing your surprise by the photos the city sent to you. You mentioned that you had no idea the problem was so bad. Please imagine this. The filth you saw in the photos is in an area outside, exposed to wind, rain, and sunshine. Furthermore the maintenance people clean once a week. So roughly speaking a lot of what you saw is one week’s accumulation and it’s been weathered. Now imagine an area that has never been touched by wind, rain, sunlight or water from a hose for two years. Imagine it is totally enclosed and imagine multiple pigeons are sleeping, copulating, birthing, de-feathering, nesting and going to the bathroom in this totally enclosed place. Well that’s what is sitting atop my ceiling, three feet above my head.
That you would be surprised by how bad this problem is does not speak well of my writing skills. I have written you now several e-mails distressed as chaos—literally chaos—is breaking out above my head as birds shuffle around, move rocks, flap wings, and feed crying babies on top of my ceiling. These birds may not be very big but they don’t need to be. Their floor and my ceiling is a simple piece of drywall. When they scratch on it, walk on it and do all other manner of things I assure you it comes across quite loudly in my apartment. I am not a pigeon behaviorist (although with the amount of time I’ve spent now writing about them I should be getting college credit somewhere for this) so I cannot tell you what it is they are always doing, but I am not lying when I tell you that sometimes it sounds like something is about to crash through my ceiling. It is distracting. It is impossible to sleep if they are doing it and I’ve done all I could not to take an axe and open the ceiling up myself to take care of the problem once and for all. It is crazy making. Crazy making. Crazy making.
I have offered, nay, suggested I don’t know how many times that someone come to me so that I can show them the problem and so they can check with me to see if the problem has been solved. This has never happened. In a recent e-mail I told you that I went out and talked to one of the guys after they thought they’d accomplished something and told him that the birds were still there and he dismissed me out of hand. That said, I will still meet with someone.
The birds are usually most active in the morning around 7 am but they don’t seem to be on a set schedule. It’s 4 o’clock right now and they’re shuffling around a fair amount. If someone wants to sit in my place for an hour I can guarantee they’ll hear them at some point. Just so you know, if and when someone does come to my apartment and asks where the problem is, I will be pointing to every square inch of my ceiling. That is where the birds have been. That is where the birds are and that’s where the birds and their pollution will continue to be until that area is cleaned out.
Just to make sure I’m clear: The problem is NOT on the roof. The problem is NOT in the rafters. The problem is NOT on the carport roof.
The problem is on the other side of my ceiling, under the roof. It may be called the crawlspace. It may be called the attic. Whatever you want to call it, that is where the birds are. They make a lot of noise. They create a lot of unhealthy waste that I’m sure I’ve been breathing now for two years and it doesn’t matter how many times those guys move those big, clumsy cages, that space—atop my ceiling, beneath the roof—is where the problem will continue to be.
Please, please, please give this e-mail to the person who is in charge of taking care of this. Somewhere in the communication train the message is not getting through.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Patrick Devine
Of course it was Aneta at the city of Glendale who responded first. She e-mailed Jennifer and cc’d me this:
Jennifer,
This problem needs to be resolved once and for all, and the sooner the better. You need to instruct and supervise, a thorough cleaning (and only then, sealing of holes) of the crawl area. As I understood from the e-mails between you and Patrick, your instructions are not being followed by your staff (or they are not understanding what is being asked of them). In either case, please follow through and ensure resolution of this issue, latest by Friday.
Thank you.
Aneta
Aneta followed that with an e-mail to me. “I promise not to rest until this issue is resolved,” she wrote. “Thank you for your patience and I hope they will clean up the crawl area by Friday. If not, I will have to utilize other means.” Now that’s a public servant!
So at 10 am, Thursday, I had a meeting in the parking lot with Jennifer, Sergio, Aneta, and a city inspector named John. We all took turns contributing to an awkward conversation before Sergio jumped in with an enthusiasm I’d never before seen. His menacing appearance turned pathetic in front of my eyes as he kissed up to the city employees.
John, the city inspector, gave the impression that he wanted to be a cop but couldn’t pass the psych test. I imagine he’s probably pushing for city inspectors to be equipped with a 9 mm because “you never know.” For my purposes, though, his intensity seemed a positive. As the five of us, me, Sergio, Jennifer, John, and Aneta, stood in my apartment waiting for the noise I’d been promising them, John explained that pigeons are considered vermin and there is a municipal code with regards to them. John could have gone on to explain the history of the pigeon and we still would have had time to kill before any of them made noise, but finally a scurrying was heard above and I was vindicated.
The new Sergio immediately assured everyone that his team would cut a hole in the ceiling (hey, who’s been saying that for months?) and remove the birds and their filth. As everyone left my apartment, John gave the place a real once-over, knocking on my bedroom wall. “That’s not regulation. Is this place advertised as a single or a one bedroom? Aneta, check on that when you get back.”
The next morning Sergio and his crew returned with the tools to conduct their surgery. Sergio delegated the work to a portly underling who seemed to know he was about to be involved in an unpleasant task. After they put plastic on the carpet and outlined where the hole would be cut, he went to work. Before he completely opened the hole, though, he stepped off the ladder and he walked outside; he looked at me, searching for the correct words in English. “Bird shit.” Yes, bird shit.
After he’d collected himself and finished cutting out the hole, the horrors were revealed. Two live birds, two dead and decaying birds, a few eggs (it was eggs they were rolling around, not rocks as I had thought) and a shitload of shit. In a particularly pathetic moment, the worker had captured one of the pigeons, and after hed released it, the bird flew right into the wall of the garage. I couldn’t help but think how that was the closest any bird ever came to the “traps” that had been located up there for several weeks.
I couldn’t sit around and monitor Sergio and his minions for the whole day, though. It didn’t seem necessary. Of course I was wrong. They filled in the whole with a latch door and then painted over it so it was kind of sealed shut by the dry paint. I went ahead though and opened the latch and found ... you guessed it. They had not removed any of the bird shit. So for the first weekend in memory I would not hear the chirping, the cooing, the scratching or any of the other madness from the birds, but I would still be living with a vast amount of pigeon shit on the other side of my ceiling. And I’d have to be okay with that for the weekend.
On Monday morning, though, everyone had another angry e-mail waiting for them when they got to work.
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