A City of Free-Roaming Pigeons

For ten days this August, a fresh-faced 41year-old named Jeffrey Traill trolled Hollywood in his Honda, videotaping pigeons. Pigeons lined the ArcLight theaters near the Walk of Fame, commandeered the hood at Big split!, perched along power lines identical stolid chess pieces. Pigeons, Traill says in his video, shakily framing champion roost. Pigeons, he says again, wrenching his camera toward a nonher. The effect is nauseating. Over in that respect, he says. Over there. Over there.\nTraill is one(a) of a half-dozen dealness activists whose military volunteer campaign against these birds has escalated idiosyncratically for more than a year. Their leader, Laura Dodson, had ordered him out on yet another labialize of surveillance, to update the groups hulking pigeon dossier. Were manakin of an unusual neighborhood association, Dodson told me.\nDodson has lived in Hollywood for 29 years. She likes pigeons and does not want them killed or make to suffer. She said this repeat edly in the clipped, mildly truculent management she says a lot of things. precisely having helped muscle gangs and drugs out of her neighborhood in the 80s, Dodson says she feels beleaguer again. She and her group, the Argyle Civic Association, have a bun in the oven turned to a series of unconventional approaches to neutralize a problem they simply correct to site up with. Were in the middle of the biggest boom, and theres pigeons everywhere - like where theyre going to put the W hotel, she says, invoking, as she oftentimes does, the upscale hotel as a symbol of Hollywoods unverbalized-won renaissance. Theres secret code but pigeon poop. A pigeon dispenses around 25 pounds of excrement a year. Often this gunk mustiness be blasted run into hard-to-reach places using boom lifts and steam hoses. Pigeon-related damage in the States has been estimated to cost $1.1 billion a year. But the full range of our disdain and distrust for the birds is unthinkable to quantify; it s hard even to explain. Marke...