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Aug. 14th, 2016 03:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
la_rainetteToday I cooked and ate a pigeon egg.
This was not entirely an act of retaliation, though to be honest, THE PIGEONS HAD IT COMING. We live at the very end of a quiet cul-de-sac, in a house that inadvertently offers great nesting grounds for pigeons, surrounded by a series of houses offering similarly welcoming places. Not that any of us two-legged folks had planned it so; it just happens that all pigeons need to be happy is a small, flat space away from squirrels and raccoons and preferably protected from the elements.
Such as, for instance, the roof above the bow window of our library. Especially since there is a really, really nice tree just a few feet from it. Ahahahaha fuck.
Listen, I have nothing against pigeons per se. I don't particularly like them - I think they're filthy, I think they poop a lot, but I don't generally mind them that much. Unless, that it, they live above my driveway and regularly attempt to poop holes into the hood of my car. That I very strongly disapprove of. I mean, my car is the victim of daily shit-bombing, you guys! I instantaneously recognize it in any parking lot because it's the dirtiest car around. I once approached a car of the same make and model as mine just to realize from thirty feet away that it couldn't be mine because it was too clean.
Our neighbors have attempted to get rid of their pigeons (we have a whole colony by now) by putting a cast iron owl on top of their bow window, but that only worked for about a day: the first afternoon we heard frantic flapping of wings as the pigeons approached their usual nesting grounds and then fled in abject terror. But the very next morning I spotted a pigeon comfortably sitting next to the owl, and in the following days they started perching on the owl's head to better survey the neighborhood.
Not even the local hawk has convinced them to move elsewhere, as we have only one (1) small, very well fed hawk in our neighborhood and MANY MANY PIGEONS.
So two days ago, Husband and Froglet bought a very long ladder (because - OMG you guys, don't get me started on the wildlife in this country, just don't. *sighs* We have to go around the entire roof and wildlife-proof it, because we had a BEE SWARM in our walls recently and just, no). They carried it home (it was too long to fit in the car and the store we ordered it from is close to our home) while huffing and puffing impressively and stored it in the garage, where it only JUST fits. Then yesterday afternoon, Husband and Froglet cleaned up the whole area above the bow window. All the pigeon poop, the few haphazardly assembled sticks they used as a nest, all the grossness, gone.
And then this morning they went up again, because now that the top of the bow window is clean and pigeon-free we're going to try and place bird netting or something, to keep them from settling down again, and LO AND BEHOLD: they were already back. Momma pigeon had laid a perfectly fresh, perfectly pretty little egg.
We looked at it for a while, wondering what we should do with it, and then we wondered what it would taste like. So we hard-boiled it, cut it, smelled it, and when nothing objectionable happened, we ate it. It was tiny and super hard to peel, and tasted just like any ordinary egg.
(I was planning to add pictures, but I can't manage to get my pictures to show and it's driving me insane so I'm giving up for now. Also, apart from being a small egg, it was still, you know: a spectacularly unexceptional egg :D )
This was not entirely an act of retaliation, though to be honest, THE PIGEONS HAD IT COMING. We live at the very end of a quiet cul-de-sac, in a house that inadvertently offers great nesting grounds for pigeons, surrounded by a series of houses offering similarly welcoming places. Not that any of us two-legged folks had planned it so; it just happens that all pigeons need to be happy is a small, flat space away from squirrels and raccoons and preferably protected from the elements.
Such as, for instance, the roof above the bow window of our library. Especially since there is a really, really nice tree just a few feet from it. Ahahahaha fuck.
Listen, I have nothing against pigeons per se. I don't particularly like them - I think they're filthy, I think they poop a lot, but I don't generally mind them that much. Unless, that it, they live above my driveway and regularly attempt to poop holes into the hood of my car. That I very strongly disapprove of. I mean, my car is the victim of daily shit-bombing, you guys! I instantaneously recognize it in any parking lot because it's the dirtiest car around. I once approached a car of the same make and model as mine just to realize from thirty feet away that it couldn't be mine because it was too clean.
Our neighbors have attempted to get rid of their pigeons (we have a whole colony by now) by putting a cast iron owl on top of their bow window, but that only worked for about a day: the first afternoon we heard frantic flapping of wings as the pigeons approached their usual nesting grounds and then fled in abject terror. But the very next morning I spotted a pigeon comfortably sitting next to the owl, and in the following days they started perching on the owl's head to better survey the neighborhood.
Not even the local hawk has convinced them to move elsewhere, as we have only one (1) small, very well fed hawk in our neighborhood and MANY MANY PIGEONS.
So two days ago, Husband and Froglet bought a very long ladder (because - OMG you guys, don't get me started on the wildlife in this country, just don't. *sighs* We have to go around the entire roof and wildlife-proof it, because we had a BEE SWARM in our walls recently and just, no). They carried it home (it was too long to fit in the car and the store we ordered it from is close to our home) while huffing and puffing impressively and stored it in the garage, where it only JUST fits. Then yesterday afternoon, Husband and Froglet cleaned up the whole area above the bow window. All the pigeon poop, the few haphazardly assembled sticks they used as a nest, all the grossness, gone.
And then this morning they went up again, because now that the top of the bow window is clean and pigeon-free we're going to try and place bird netting or something, to keep them from settling down again, and LO AND BEHOLD: they were already back. Momma pigeon had laid a perfectly fresh, perfectly pretty little egg.
We looked at it for a while, wondering what we should do with it, and then we wondered what it would taste like. So we hard-boiled it, cut it, smelled it, and when nothing objectionable happened, we ate it. It was tiny and super hard to peel, and tasted just like any ordinary egg.
(I was planning to add pictures, but I can't manage to get my pictures to show and it's driving me insane so I'm giving up for now. Also, apart from being a small egg, it was still, you know: a spectacularly unexceptional egg :D )
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Date: 2016-08-15 12:20 am (UTC)-J
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Date: 2016-08-15 09:58 pm (UTC)I hope our potential future queen is suitably impressed, then :D