Reporting from Bangkok, Thailand — Bangkok's pigeons are little winged street toughs, nurtured on dust, dirt and noise.
So, the local government, out of the goodness of its heart (or maybe after a look in its pocket), has decided they need a little "holiday" in the country.
We're sending them to the forest, officials said recently, to live a life of luxury, clean air and food aplenty.
"It's friendlier in the forest," said Teerachon Manomaiphibul, deputy governor of Bangkok, and pigeon relocator in chief. "It's eco-friendly."
For those who don't spend sleepless nights worrying about bird welfare, the city has also tapped self-interest: Giant billboards around the Sanam Luang grounds abutting the Grand Palace, where the removal effort is focused, show images of worms found in pigeon stomachs along with details of bird flu and health risks to children.
The Bangkok government's plan envisioned shipping the feral pigeons off to scenic Ratchaburi province amid reassurances that it wasn't poisoning the urban pests, which it tried a decade ago. (The poisoning campaign wasn't only a P.R. disaster, it was ineffective. "The pigeons survived and the trees all died," one observer said.)
Not in my backyard, Ratchaburi residents cried. Why should we take your feathered undesirables? They'll only damage our crops.
Bangkok's Plan B involved sending the birds to another sylvan province until people there expressed similar reluctance to accept the capital's droppings, this time on water cleanliness grounds.
"Round one went to the pigeons," the Bangkok Post remarked in an editorial about the kerfuffle, which most recognize is motivated more by the city's efforts to redevelop Sanam Luang than bird welfare.
Even as officials squabble over the birds' destination, efforts to catch the feral flock continued apace.
On a recent afternoon, several police officers guarded an area the size of a football field enclosed by police tape. At its center stood a 40-foot-square frame covered with green netting with one side left open. Periodically, workers scattered food inside. Birds, long used to a beg-borrow-steal existence, flocked to the easy handout.
The government's plan has been to lure the birds into the enclosure at Sanam Luang for a few weeks, then drop the net after they're suitably lulled, and transport them to bird nirvana.
