Jail Bird

Some of you have been asking what, if anything, happened to the lawsuit against Pigeon Lady. On October 11, the day after the decision was supposed to be handed down, I called our building's attorney to see if he had any news for us. He said that there had been a delay in the trial, but he reassured me that he would contact us as soon as he had any news. In the meantime, life with Pigeon Lady has gone on pretty much as usual: constant pigeon-feedings, loud music and incessant stomping.

Today, though, something unusual happened. When I looked out onto our balcony, I saw the remains of a very dead pigeon leaning against the shutters. I don't know how long it's been there, but it's safe to say that it isn't going to start looking or smelling better any time soon. I was pissed. Not only do we have to put up with pigeon poop and feathers everywhere, but now we have to deal with their festering corpses, too? I was trying to calculate the trajectory needed to launch the maggot-strewn husk into Pigeon Lady's open windows (it's tricky, see, because you have to take into account the heavy wind resistance) when Pegs suggested that I just call the cops. I didn't think that was such a good idea at first, since I imagined that the operator would chastise me for tying up the phone line and tell me to deal with it myself. To my great surprise, however, the officer reassured me that she would send someone over right away.

Sooner than we would have received a delivery from Domino's, three policemen were knocking on our door. Fate must have been smiling on us, because they arrived just after she had fed the pigeons, so the little fuckers were really going at it upstairs. The officers took one look at the layer of bird shit on the balcony, the mud and excrement on the windows and the decomposing air-rat right outside our door and told us that they would take care of it.

I don't think that I've ever heard anything more melodious than the shouts of those officers when she opened her door. It was beautiful. All Pigeon Lady could do was repeat her lame excuses about how the pigeons just have the habit of roosting there and how there is nothing that she can do about it. She tried very forcefully to convince them that she had stopped feeding the pigeons back in July, and in any case the building organization and the ensuing lawsuit had made it clear that she needed to stop, but the cops weren't having any of it. They told her in no uncertain terms that they knew she was lying and that if they had to come back another time they were going to do more than just warn her to stop. The four of them were really going at it, with Pigeon Lady protesting vehemently and all three officers telling her that she was breaking the law, disturbing the peace and endangering the health and safety of others with her behavior. When at one point she said that the dead pigeon on the balcony was our problem and that we should clean it up, they responded that she was our only problem and that they were her problem. I was so happy that I almost giggled out loud like a schoolgirl and tried to high-five Pegs, but unfortunately she wasn't looking at the time and ended up with one of my fingers lodged in her ear.

After the ordeal, the officers came back down and told me to give them a call if she causes any more problems, so I put them on speed dial and have my finger resting on the button. I guess I had been hoping too much that she would just lose it and attack one of the officers in a drunken frenzy, because in my imagination I saw the cops whip out their billy clubs and forcefully subdue her a la Rodney King. I guess that our luck today had its limits, but it's been over an hour since the 5-0 hit the streets, and she's been as quiet as a mouse up there. I'm sure that she'll try to get back at us eventually with even more wastewater and pigeon poop on our balcony, but in the meantime we're savoring the sweet taste of victory. It tastes like ... dead pigeon.