Of Pigeon Tales and Reclaiming Balconies

Firstly, let me just say, I never actually minded pigeons. I mean sure, they don’t always seem to possess the highest IQ, and sure, it’s slightly creepy how they look at you sideways, and it can be downright annoying the way their head moves when they make a sound that has been best described in our language as gutar-goo. But for the record, I never really minded pigeons.

But for some weird reason, pigeons started loving our tiny excuse of a balcony. To hide behind the AC unit in. To build nests in. And to downright poop all over in. I mean, who poops where they sleep and are about to push out their babies? Answer, pigeons do. And poop they do a lot.

And A & I dealt with it in the way we knew best – by ignoring it.

This had always been a great solution when there was a maid around who also for the most part chose to ignore it, but could be nudged every few days to begrudgingly scrub and clean it out.

But now, given that it was just us, this misfired a tiny wee bit.

Just enough that our balcony soon seemed to have an altogether new multi-coloured flooring.

So we came up with the next best solution. We stopped stepping out onto the balcony.

But then it started raining and for the first time in our lives we actually enjoyed this season given that we could sit inside comfortably sipping coffee and feeling all insta-poetic without worrying about wading through muck with dead rats floating around you and… wait, wrong post. This is not the place to crib about Monsoons Shreya…

So I finally opened the balcony door, ignored the sight & smell of the floor, and sat on the sofa next to it, enjoying the breeze. The pigeons looked at me skeptically and flew away with a sinister look, giving me an ultimatum to not be there when they got back. But nature had other plans. It suddenly started to pour, which clearly took one Mr. Pigeon by surprise, enough to drench him and send him flying right back, all the way inside our house, onto my sofa to snuggle comfortably next to me. I have to admit at this point, surprisingly, I screamed much more than the pigeon did. It seemed to be in shock and just looked at me with a sideways wtf lady expression. But in my defence, this isn’t the first time that a pigeon has fallen on me while indoors (another story for another time), and the last time it ended up scratching me pretty badly.

So we finally decided enough was enough.

We had the balcony deep cleaned (took the guy hours, just to give you a perspective of the multi-layered pooping). And decided to have a pigeon net installed. Though the netting didn’t happen for another two days, which meant A & I effectively turned into human scare crows for the next 48 hours, running out mid surya-namaskar to chase away pigeons before they pooped. We *may* have inadvertently caused some pigeons to poop out of the sheer surprise of having a human jump out at you screaming for no good reason.

But now the net is secure.

And so is our balcony.

And Mr. & Mrs. Pigeon can go make out somewhere else (seriously, the amount of pigeon sex I’ve noticed this season isn’t even funny).

The End.

Was your weekend more happening than mine?