#49 - pigeon-ocide

TARGET: Spotted Nape Dove

OBJECTIVE: Total Exterminationi've been waiting for summertime to come along again since it ended last year. beach weather, no work, get to sleep in late. but every single frickin' day of my summer so far has been maliciously ravaged by these fat, lazy bastards. every single day between 5:45 and 6:00 am i've been jarred awake by their constant, blaring, and insanely metronomic COOING!!! GRRR!!! it's destroyed any hope i've have this summer for catching up on my sleep and restoring some type of normalcy in my sleeping patterns.see this? see that little shit hidding behind the fern? that's my neighbor's roof and it's right outside my damn window. there the jackass sits cooing insanely all morning. and it's not like i hate all birds chirpping. hell, i had parakeets growing up, but this bastard is different. it coos LOUD and in maniacal intervals. it's like, "COOOOO!!!" and then i'm like, "crap, shut the hell up," and then i actually have to wait for the next "COOOO!!!" and then i don't hear anything so i'm like, "okay, it's ov.." "COOO!!!" grr, so irritating! so, every morning i lie in bed and seethe hatred until i'm finally forced to get up out of bed and pound on the windows to scare them away, by the way, the other morning when i did that i hit the windows so hard in frustration that i knocked a glass jalousie out. but recently, the little creeps have gotten bold and aren't scared away by noise anymore, so then i gotta leave the warmth and comfort of my bed at 6:00 in the morning, put my clothes on, and go outside in the cold to find and throw rocks at the bastards. GRR!
and i swear it's only those doves, because even those these zebra doves (above) do that annoying mating dance thing where they lift their disgusting tail feathers and coo, the frickin' spotted doves are ten times louder and a ga-zillion times more insane-making.

and so now, my mission for this summer is to hunt down and kill every single one of these little f***ers on my street. i sit outside and wait for their feathery asses to land on my roof and pelt them with as many rocks as i can fit in my hand. but the damn things are bold frickin' idiots. they come and fly right back into the strike zone.

so, to help you identify (and subsequently kick, run over, or stone to death) these birds, here's what the experts say about these bastards:

"Adults are brownish-colored with a pinky hue all over, but slightly paler below. The tail is darker and quite wide. On the neck there is a band of black which is covered in white spots and extends from the fore-neck right around the back of the neck. Juveniles similar but lack neck collar. (12 inches) Calls: Three or four "coo"s but lower pitched and louder than Zebra Dove."

by the way, although not part of the original plan, please feel free to rid the earth of any zebra doves you may come across as well (just for good measure), here's what the experts say about them:

Sexes similar. Pale gray below with a pinky wash and gray above with dark barring. Barring below varies but can be restricted to the neck sides or can cover the entire underparts. The upper breast and neck are often tinged blue.Dark eye and small pale bill. (8 inches) Calls: Series of staccato "coo"s given rapidly. Also when displaying more drawn-out deeper "coo", accompanied by tail fanning and cocking.

although they don't bug me as much, they use the wall outside my bedroom window for their "tail fanning and cocking," (haha!) which grosses me out.

but there must be a better way to get those pigeons besides throwing handfuls of rocks at them. yesterday i tried to build one of those traps with box, a twig and some string, but that didn't fool 'em, and bear grylls hasn't taught me how to catch birds yet so i'll have to wait for another episode of man vs. wild to tell me how to get those damn birds. so please, tell everyone you know about Operation: Pigeon-ocide. we must spread the word! PIGEONS BEWARE!!