You know, when I found an old book of recipes, I found a recipe for pigeon stew. I laughed out loud at the thought…and then I was corrected by someone who said that they used to eat pigeons.
My ignorance was showing….
What wasn’t said was that people who were poor used to eat pigeon stew…
So, here we have a city that has poisoned pigeons before…well, we think it was the city — the newspaper never said whom was responsible. The investigation into the 2012 poisoning stopped when it was revealed that someone with some authority was poisoning them.
Yesterday, I saw a pigeon in dire distress, going backwards while its head and body shook like it had been electrocuted. It tried helplessly to fly and couldn’t get a foot off the ground. It would sickeningly twist its head back and forth. I poured water on the ground hoping the bird would drink it and bathe in it to rid itself of the toxin. It was too *out* of it.
I felt so helpless to help what was a clear case of poisoning. This poor bird suffered for HOURS until mercifully, it finally succumbed.
If you read the comments in the link, someone posted about a hawk that drove a pigeon into the house, breaking its neck, then eating it. The commenter questioned what happens to the hawk that eats a poisoned bird? What happens to the pigeon that died in front of my car? If it is buried, then the poison enters the soil and water. What then?
“This was a commercial application downtown for the purpose of killing pigeons,” Berven said. “We’re going through the case file to determine if everything was done the way it was supposed to be done. But preliminarily, we’re not finding anything that was done wrong.”
If something is strong enough to kill a living thing, it is dangerous to ALL living things, regardless of whether it is legal or “applied correctly”.
The shortsightedness is tiresome in that we have known since World War II, when they began using chemicals that were used in warfare on our lawns and gardens. It was known then that these chemicals in higher concentrations killed people!
What was done to these birds was comparable to torture. So when a politician or a corporate exec or a single citizen puts these birds through such agony and cause a ripple effect down the food chain, one has to wonder what is their stopping point?
These are the folks whom have no problem sending other people’s kids to war or they have no qualms over torturing people. Or they have no problem with war at all. It’s just a different kind of mass killing.
Why do they think it’s okay to poison them? Why not promote hunting them and using them for food? I would welcome that, if done respectfully, more than poisoning them– especially when people are going hungry. We’ve become snotty with food– with eating chickens and beef instead of game and plentiful wildlife. Again — done respectfully with gracious acknowledgement of them feeding us and keeping us alive.
Dead sardines washed up on a beach in Chile, May 2016. 
Protesters occupying the Williams Lake Indian Band administration office try unsuccessfully to block band councillor Rick Gilbert from entering the building Wednesday afternoon. Gilbert along with respected elders, other councillors and Acting Chief Heather McKenzie rushed the building in a chaotic scene outside the band office. 
Eagle 
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