Friday, August 24, 2007

the law of unintended consequences




Okay, the NAACP local chapter in Jax, Fla is 'outraged' at the cartoon above. Good freekin' grief.....



Now on to a story I promised I would disclose.

Many eons ago I worked at a private school located in Midtown Atlanta, across the street from Piedmont Park, our cities version on 'Central Park'...

The 'children' at this 'school' would break for lunch everyday and eat it outside on the playground. Then the pigeons would come. The school had an old janitor/handyman that used to deal with this. Every couple of weeks, while the school was closed, he would climb on the gym with a bag of white bread and a high powered BB gun, and a 6 pack. Then he would commit 'pigeon genocide'. One time I watched as he picked up about 70 or so dead pigeons and put them in a hefty bag, and sprayed off the playground..

This appeared to work, somewhat. It kept the pigeon population down considerably.

Then, a hippie female teacher named 'Ravenel' found out and quickly put a stop to it.

Enter the 'experts. The first thing they did was put up stuffed owls on the roofs of all the structres. That did not work at all. Then they drove sharpened metal spikes underneath all the eaves so the Pigoens could not hang out there. That worked, to an extent. Except now they were sitting on top of the roof, often on the stuffed owls! Finally, they decided to put an adhesive on the roof itself, so the Pigeons would not want to walk on it. This seemed to do the trick~ the Pigeons were still present, but left to sit on trees away from where the kids were eating..

Only one problem: the adhesive glued about a zillion pounds of perilous pigeon poo right to the shingles. This was a huge health code violation. The school eventually had to re-roof and power clean every roof of every structure. It cost a ton of $$$. More then it cost to build a cafeteria, which is how they eventually settled the problem.

I often wonder what the janitor did with those dead Pigeons...I guess I'll never know.

Look for me tonight with Mudcat again at the Northside Tavern~ and tommorrow at the Grant Park Summer Shade fest playing with the Stonehouse Posse!









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