Pigeon Crap Tuesday

Today was pigeon crap Tuesday, despite the fact that it's a Monday. Under the east canopy at work there are pigeons that nest in the eaves, which gets to be quite messy. This last summer it was our job to clean out the eaves on Tuesdays. The process involves a hose, a very tall ladder, and getting sprayed with a lot of pigeon crap. It's glorious.

So today, first thing when I got in to work my boss said that the pigeons needed to be dealt with and I leapt at the chance. I hadn't gotten to do pigeon duty in ages.

"Pigeon crap Tuesday?! On a Monday?! It's Christmas come early!"

Three of us went out there, but I have the most experience so I got to do most of the hosing while up on the ladder. Basically it rains down crap and you try to not get covered in the stuff. And it was beautiful outside today, which made it that much more exciting. The whole thing took an hour and a half. Time sure flies when you're up to your elbows in bird poop.

Story from this Summer. My coworker E and I were usually the ones to do pigeon crap Tuesday. It all came about because of these memos we'd get from PB who's in charge of everything that goes on in the Wilk. He'd send us memos asking us to get rid of the birds and we'd be forced to go out and deal with them as best we could, which usually involved hosing out the eaves while up on a ladder. One time he called in saying that there was a nest under the canopy and that we were to tear it down. We went out there, looked at it, and both of us admitted that we were hesitant to destroy some poor bird's nest. E said that we were just doing our job, that we were following orders, and that we couldn't possibly be held accountable for what we were about to do. I made reference to Nuremberg at that point. He ignored me and tore down the nest.

Directly after tearing down this nest we went to put our ladder away, and what happened? A little bird flew up into the eaves where its nest used to be and produced a few sorrowful sounding cheeps, almost as if to say "Hey, where's my house?"

Then a second bird flew up and the two cheeped together, having a conversation that I can only imagine went something like this:

B2: What happened?! Where's our house?
B1: I don't know, but when I came back there were two evil custodians walking away from here. I just don't understand why they would want to tear down our home.
B2: What did we ever do to deserve this? For the love of all that's good and decent, why? Why did this have to happen?

Yeah, we felt pretty low about having destroyed their nest, and what's worse is that the crosswalk by the canopy makes that chirping sound, and every time it sounded I thought of what we'd done. We also accidentally killed some baby birds once. I wasn't actually there for that one, but I heard about it that afternoon. They didn't know they were up there when we started the process.

The last time I did pigeon crap Tuesday was sometime last semester. I was up on a ladder with a broom handle trying to force out a particularly large pigeon while it kept backing further and further into the corner. Then a girl from one of my classes walked by and we had a semi-awkward greeting due to the fact that I was up on a ladder antagonizing a pigeon and she was walking around like a normal human being. I succeeded in getting the bird to take flight while she was still present, which was unfortunate because its movements caused quite a bit of crap to come showering down.

Oh well. I got to be outside doing something incredibly fun, disgusting, and interesting this afternoon after having to sit through three incredibly boring classes. Today was a great day.