Life may be Skittles and life may be beer, but not in Texarkana when you’re a pigeon…
The city’s annual festival was marred by dead pigeons nose-diving into pavement and others dying on downtown sidewalks after they ate poisoned corn from the roof of a nearby bank branch.
Um… it’s cheaper than fireworks? And biodegradable!
Authorities said they cleaned up more than 25 sick or dead birds following miscalculated pest control efforts at a CapitalOne Bank branch.
“What have you got in your wallet?”
“Pigeon poison!”
“Um… I’d rather be screwed by absurdly high interest rates.”
“The death of these pigeons was more than an unfortunate accident,” city president for CapitalOne Bank Lacy McMillen said in today’s online edition of Texarkana Gazette.
Oh boy. Get the company’s name mentioned twice. That should offset the expense of stadium naming rights and sponsoring state fair baking contests.
“It was not the intention of the bank to harm any of these birds.”
Yeah, most people putting out poison for animals don’t mean any harm to them. They’re hoping that the animals enjoy extreme physical discomfort and death, vomiting and wobbling into oblivious with delight.
McMillen said the bank hired an exterminator to handle its pigeon problem after a bird entered the bank and defecated on a customer.
Only bank managers are allowed to crap on customers, dammit! Kill that flapping bastard!
The Shreveport, La., company hired to do it, Anti-Pest Co. Inc., said the aim of the treated corn was to sicken pigeons and divert them from the rooftop but that death was sometimes an “unfortunate side effect.”
When was the last time you’ve heard “Death” listed as a “side effect” in a pharmaceutical commercial?
“Side effects include nausea, blurred vision, stroke, and death.”
“Hey, doc, can you write my wife a prescription for that stuff?”
“No, Mr. Clinton.”
Vera Martin, working at a handbag booth at the city’s weekend Quadrangle Festival, said the poisoning sends a bad message to children.
Here’s what I got out of it: “Don’t eat corn you find on the roof.”
Here’s another: “This is what happens when you ban discharging firearms within city limits.”
And finally: “First they came for the pigeons, and I said nothing…”
“I think it’s cruelty to animals,” she said. “What other animals could be killed in the process of doing this?”
Here’s a list of animals that won’t be killed in the process: stingrays, moose, dragons, emus, coelocanth, and Pete Doherty.
Let’s face it. At this point, Doherty could speedball a Wallgreens and still walk in a straight line.
Now before you persist in blaming Tom Lehrer, keep in mind that:
- The bank has admitted to hiring the pest control company.
- This incident took place in the Summer, not Spring.
- The method of poisoning was corn, not peanuts. (“When they see us coming, the birdies all try an’ hide, But they still go for peanuts when coated with cyanide.”)
Of course, that John Mark Karr guy said he killed Jon Benet Ramsey, and we all know how that turned out…
Would be cool if the bank manager said: “Yes, we screwed up… because some of them are still alive!”
Because Lair wrote this story and it involves a bank, somehow I feel like I’m compelled to make a joke about the “jooooos”…
Jews in Texarkana?
Perish the thought.
The thing that jumped out at me the most in this was the following:
“…the city’s weekend Quadrangle Festival…”
What the deuce is a Quadrangle Festival? Is Texarcana some kind of nerd mecca? Maybe I should put together a Rhombus Festival? Dodecahedron Fair?
Knave,
A rhombus is a quandrangle, you knave.
I’d go to a Dodecahedron Fair!
Talk about conflicting emotions. I hate Capital One and have long since cut ties with them over various disputes. But I REALLY hate pigeons.
It’s almost enough to make me reapply for a credit card.
“When was the last time you’ve heard “Death” listed as a “side effect” in a pharmaceutical commercial?”
Well, there were those Tylenol commercials in the mid 80’s
I now want a t-shirt that advertises a Dodecahedron Fair.
And, I’ve heard of “suicidal tendencies” as a side effect…but normally it’s for happy pills…or laxatives.
Another good one, Laurence! I think the bank should be applauded for its proactive stance in dealing with inconvenience-causing animals of phylum Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata, class Aves, order Columbiformes, family Columbidae (most likely, specifically, Columba livia domestica).
This is Hilarious!
We did this at an Entenmanns Plant on Long Island a few years ago …
The product is called Avitrol and it’s coated with a Hallucinagenic Alkaloid. The birds flip out like drug crazed hippies and are supposed to scare the other birds off. You are also supposed to blend it with other grain at like a 10:1 ratio. We dumped a hundred pounds straight.
It rained hippy pigeons for a week!
Aren’t pigeons already hippies? They smell bad, poop everywhere, demand food, and give cars hideous designs.
Bah! They should have given the local illegal alien school children an early dismisal, handed each of them a net and stationed them outside the bank building and just called it a “free lunch program for children of undocumented workers”. Makes great p.r. and shows the world just how much they really care.
// A company I work for hired a pest control company to eliminate an infestation of pigeons that were in the upper regions of our manufacturing facility. We’re talking HUNDREDS, perhaps over a thousand of these sky rats living in the area over the grid-ceiling inside this giant steel skinned building. (Like a million manufacturing plants everywhere – tons of open space overhead and vents exiting to outside.)
This pest company also used bait that had a similarly devastating effect on the pigeon population – near 100% kill rate. The only problem was their “theory” that the birds would LEAVE to find water and die elsewhere was off by the same 100%. The birds all returned to their roosts INSIDE the building to expire in every available nook and cranny inside.
What followed next was the greatest explosion in the fly population that has been witnessed outside of a bad sci-fi movie. We literally had maggots falling through the grid ceiling into offices and into clean room manufacturing processes. You could watch them wriggle across the inside of light fixtures. The lunch room? Forget it.
(No dodecahedrons were harmed but the manufacturing process actually does involve millions of hexagons.[Really.])
(There is a Jewish guy and a Pakistani lady working there. Also some guy that claims to like Texas A & M, but we think he’s gay.)
(I am selling this script to Oliver Stone.)//
Having experienced the joys of “banking” from this same mega-bank… I can only hope the flys were big ones.
We return you to our regime already in progress.
BAH!
“It rained hippy pigeons for a week” i know I should feel bad for laughing, but I just can’t stop. I will laugh about that for the rest of the week. Thanks Sean!
Good stuff Lair.
“Don’t eat corn you find on the roof.”
That’s good advice no matter where you live.
Blasting Kinky Friedman songs would clear the infestation. Of people that is.
“When they see us coming, they all run and try and hide…
…but still go for peanuts, when coated with cyanide!”
Greatest song ever.
This article has given me interesting ideas for dealing with the birds that keep crapping on my car at my apartment.