Why I hate pigeons by Cusp aged 51 and 11 months and why crazy people may not be as crazy as you think

For as long as I can remember I have hated pigeons. To me they are worse than rats and the very idea of walking across, e.g. Trafalgar Square, with the nasty disease-ridden vermin flapping about near me, or, worse still, feeding from my hand, fills me with revulsion.

Two days ago, as is the Cuspish way, I retired to the boudoir for the midday nap and left Tiffin snoozing peacefully on the sofa ---as is his way. After some 15 minutes there was an almighty crashing and banging. As I am still in Post-Shed recovery, I roused only a little and passed off the commotion as our slightly unhinged neighbour who is wont to paint his gutters all too frequently (neighbour's obsession # 302) which entails the leaning of ladders and much grunting and huffing.

Amongst his many other obsessions are:

rats;

birds fouling his car;

people who walk too close to the end of his garden;

all cats;

the milkman not leaving his bottles in the 'right place';

pressure-washing his patio;

our chickens;

our children;

next doors children;

hoovering loudly at 7 p.m. on a Sunday

...the list goes on and, funnily enough, one thing on the list as yet unmetioned, is his obsession with wood pigeons which roost in his trees and which he constantly scares away.

Often in the summer, one can be resting or chatting quietly in the garden only to be rudely awakened or wrested from intense conversation by the loudest clapping of hands and shouting from said neighbour in his attempts to scare away said pigeons -- away from his pond, from his patio, from his lawn, from the air and all surrounding space above and beyond his premises.

Anyway......I dismissed the noises which had roused me from my slumbers as yet another neighbourly prank and I drifted back to sleep.

Bangcrashbang ......like the sound of someone rattling a large stick around a box.

'What's that silly old s*d doing now ?'

'Let me go to SLEEP.... don't you KNOW there are people trying to sleep at 1 p.m. here. '

'Surely wanting to sleep in the middle of the day is normal. It is to me you daft old bu**er. Surely a midday nap is not too much to askkkkkkkkkkk......' zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...........

Bangcrashbang

There's that noise again

'Shut UP !!!!!!!'

zzzzzzzzzzzz....................

Tiffin comes thumpty-thump up the stairs and leaps on the bed, his nose in my face

.......this is serious...

I stagger downstairs, half awake and very, very grumpy. The living room door is ajar and I peer through the gap. All I can see is little bits of black stuff on the carpet

....there's nothing there,

'Daft dog......what's this all about ?'

and as I turn to go back upstairs my eye catches sight of something unusual ..... an eye looking back at me from the far end of the room. Not a human eye, not a canine eye but the blinky, winky, gimlet, glassy eye of a ghastly filthy wood pigeon who is dazed and confused and ......horrid.

The daft bird has fallen down the chimney and has brought with it a fine shower of soot and smuts and has been battering itself against the windows trying to escape. There are sooty wing prints all over the window frames, on the ceiling, against the glass. There is poop up the curtains, on the floor, on the sofa and I am parlayed with disgust. I cannot bear to enter the room and I pray that the bird will not fly through the other end of the living room into the kitchen.

The only way to reach the blessed bird is to walk past it (which I absolutely cannot do) or go out through the front door, round to the back of the house and enter through the back door, right through the kitchen and then into the living room and gingerly open the french doors so he can escape without me having to get too near to him

This is plan A.

Plan A fails. I had locked the back and front doors when I went for my nap and though I can get out of the front door with the key which is still inside, the back door key is also insidethe back door (so I can only reach it by going through the living room and past the offensive creature )and I do not have the spare with me so I cannot unlock it from outside (are you following this ?) viz I'm locked out of the back and have no shoes either.

Plan B must be put into operation:

Plan B: close the living room door, retreat to bed with dog (who is terrified) and wait an hour for partner to return with all keys and no fear of pigeons

Plan B is successful and pigeon is released by partner though even that is acheived with a certain griamce of horror.

We survey the damage ....which is considerable but not nearly as bad as it could have been.

We phone the insurance company who promise to come out the next day (which they did and the whole room is being cleaned ad restored on Monday, thank God)

Moral of the story: Pigeons are vile. Do not assume that all the apparent crazinesses of your crazy neighbour are as crazy as you first thought.

Next time I see a pigeon in MY garden or near my chimney pot I shall be clapping and shouting with my neighbour and louder than him !