Did the cats have to do an audition???

Warning: This post may include adult content.

An article in last week’s Albuquerque Journal focused on the efforts to reduce pigeon poop in the downtown area of the Duke City. Much to the horror of a city council member, the city’s efforts had been focused on trapping pigeons in a cage which, similar to a mousetrap mechanism, would break the necks of the birds before they could fly and poop again.

The council member had thought a $45,000 allocation in the city budget was to be used to clean up pigeon poop — not the birds themselves. It turns out that the city felt that just 10% of that allocation could be used more effectively for the “trap and snap” solution.

The story reminded me of a tale my late brother told when he was living in Philadelphia years ago about that city’s efforts to manage the pigeon population around city hall. It seems that the pigeons had taken a special liking to roosting and pooping on the 37-foot tall statue of William Penn on the top of the city’s headquarters.

The statue, said to be the largest cast metal structure on a top of a building in the world, has been controversial since it was placed on top of the building. It faces toward the northeast, directed toward a spot where Penn — who founded Philadelphia and for whom the state of Pennsylvania is named — signed a peace treaty with natives under an elm tree in 1683.The sculptor, Alexander Milne Calder, insisted that the statue face south to catch the sun, but when it was placed on top of the building, it was rotated about 90 degrees to the right.

The statue also has another controversial feature. The statue shows pen holding out his right hand almost level to the ground as a symbol of friendship. Unfortunately, as you can see from the picture below, the hand appears to be another appendage when viewed from a certain angle. And, you guessed it, this was a choice roosting spot for pigeons.

So what do cats have to do with this story? According to my brother, the city at one point decided that the best way to move the pigeons away from the William Penn statue was to periodically broadcast the sound of an angry, terrified cat over a loudspeaker system around city hall. The creators of this scheme figured the best way to create this grating sound was to hang a cat upside down with a microphone nearby and then provoke it.

The plan worked, except it had some unintended side effects.

“You’d be walking downtown and suddenly hear this extremely loud yowling cat noise, followed by a flutter of pigeons and then the sound of even more pigeon poop splattering on the nearby streets, sidewalks, and people” he told me. “And of course, there would usually be a few birds that would die of a heart attack from the terrifying incident and plop dead on the streets, sidewalks or on top of unnerved people.”

My brother said they later tried to drug the pigeons, but again, they’d just crash to the street below in their buzzed state, creating an even bigger mess.

The statue still stands today, and while it might not be as famous as the steps to the Philadelphia library that were featured in the movie “Rocky,” it’s probably worth a look if you’re ever there to catch that one unusual view.

I did a little more research on the statue and found an interesting article by a local journalist who probably had too much time on his hands one day and tried to find out more about the illusion. He asked an engineer named Joe Gunter to estimate how big the misidentified “appendage” would be on the 37-foot statue.

“That’s a 4-foot wanger,” Gunter responded, explaining that he did some cursory measurements that showed the hand – as seen from an image – “It is about one-ninth the size” of the overall statue.

That means if an “appendage” of that proportion was on human about 6 feet tall, it would be almost eight inches long. More than enough for a pigeon to roost on, I suppose.