Notes from the Undercroft - Gone to the Birds

St. John's has this lovely cloister area off the back of the church.  It adds to the old English feel with the beautiful carved wood and imported stone.  The not so nice part is the family of pigeons that have made the cloister their home and shitting ground.  Personally, pigeon poop doesn't bother me much.  You don't go to Venice and notice all the poop in the Piazza San Marco.  However, most of the parishioners find the poop unsightly and have complained.  A plan was set in motion with our pest control company to "fix" the pigeon problem.  Basically they put out some poison corn, get one of the birds to eat it and let off a warning squawk.  Then the other pigeons will know the area is unsafe and leave.  Now, this is not the way I would handle the situation but I just keep my head down and do as I am told.

I was having a meeting with Courtney, a parishioner, when the pest man comes to lay down the dirty work.  Literally, he walks through my meeting, holds up his hand, and says "Don't mind me, I'm just here to kill the pigeons."  As predicted, Courtney was on the other side of the pigeon problem and was appalled that we had hired someone to kill one of God's creatures.  A Church!  When she realized that her protesting was futile, she decided to head to the cloister to pray to St. Francis, Mary, and Jesus to get those birds out of there. Courtney has studied some Shaman meditation as well so she threw that in for good measure.  About 30 minutes later, she came back to our meeting saying she had done all she could do.  Meanwhile, I cannot believe this is happening.

A week past and there were no dead pigeons.  In fact, every time I went to check they were happily cooing in the rafters looking down on me with smugness.  The pest company guaranteed this would work.  I guess they didn't know of St. John's miraculous praying abilities.  I emailed Courtney immediately to tell her that her praying worked and the pigeons were saved!  Then on Sunday, I go out to find a box with a large stump holding it in place.  Now, logically, if the pigeon were dead why would you need the stump.  Clearly, someone had caught a live pigeon!  How is that even possible?!  I waited for some back up help in case the pigeon was ready to pluck my eyes out and opened the box to find a half dead smallish pigeon.  It was definitely alive but just barely.  Who knows how long it was in that box!  My back up help gets a garbage bag and scoops up the bird intent on throwing it in the garbage.  I asked him to throw the bird in the woods and give it some hope of survival but he reminded me that the garbage would "take care of it."

I was unsettled but tried to shove it from my mind.  Then as I was sitting in church feeling awful I got the overwhelming urge to save that pigeon.  I marched out in the middle of communion to the garbage cans and found my bird struggling.  I took him to the woods and let him out.  We are a church after all.  I asked him nicely to not come back or else he might find a worse fate.  My good deed done for the day I went back to finish out the service.  I checked on him for the next few days and then he flew away.  For about a month, I see no pigeons.  We called 1-800-DOG-POOP to clean up the pigeon mess.  (Yes, such a thing exists.)  The cloister has been gorgeous.  No dead pigeons, no poop.  Everybody wins!

Then last week I find a huge dead pigeon smack in the middle of the cloister.  Huge.  The biggest pigeon I have ever seen.  This is the biggest pigeon story and I am not exaggerating.   But there is no poop anywhere.  Is this just a rogue pigeon?  Caught in the wrong place at the wrong time?  Seriously, my first thought was I have to get Courtney back here to do some more praying.  I guess the pest company was right about the sacrificial pigeon but there won't be any more if I can help it.  Next time I am going to leave Courtney out there for an hour.  (Pictured is Father Michael, Rebecca, Wyatt and baby Elizabeth at Wyatt's Christening in the cloister.  If you look close enough you can see some of the poop.)