Get off my terrace

When Mama Pigeon (MP) laid eggs on our terrace, I was all excited with the nerdy science teacher hope for watching an egg hatch, and with the nerdy zoologist hope of showing my friends & family how weird looking baby pigeons are.

When they hatched, I was delighted that both chicks looked good and MP wasan attentive mom.  I happily documented their first week.

When the first week was done, I remembered something . . .


 . . .  I hate birds.

I hate you, birds.

Well, that's not totally true.  I like birds in nature (or at the zoo).  I like birds from far away.  But birds (in my humble opinion) are terrible pets.  They are not fun to own or care for.  They are noisy.  They eat constantly.  And, they are disgustingly dirty creatures.

Mama Pigeon is pretty dumb, even by bird standards (ok, that's just not fair.  Some birds are actually very smart, like crows.  Crows are super smart.). She made a nest on a cement floor.  Baby birds instinctively will back their little bird butts up to the edge of the nest and poop, so that the poop falls away from the nest and the nest stays clean.  When the mama bird decides to lay the eggs flat on a cement floor, there's no way to keep the "nest" clean.  

So, after the first week things took a turn towards "cesspool", and I had 2 options:

1.  Leave everything alone.  Nature would take it's course, for better or worse.
2.  Start cleaning out the bird's nest on a daily basis.

Now, option 1 could result in deaths on the terrace.  Even worse, it could result in the birds not growing in their feathers properly, which means that they would never fly away.  I wasn't a fan of these possibilities, so now I'm cleaning up after 2 ridiculous pigeons every day. 

And are they grateful?  Not even a little.  The younger one is a wimp and cries when I move him (or her) and the older one attacks:

You can tell this video is 1-2 weeks old, because I'm giggling. (and they're still pretty small).  When I'm out there now, I just mutter at them.

Allegedly, they're about 1-2 weeks out from starting to fly.  I'm waiting with bated breath. 

I'm only sad because you're still here, giant baby pigeons.