CATCH THE PIGEON

Patrick goes all Dick Dastardly as pesky pigeons target his Disco

espite the fact that I don’t have a cat or a dog at home, I do like animals. When Editor Dave’s puppy Billy nibbles on my feet or shoes for example, I think it’s rather endearing – he is after all a harmless little pup who just wants to play.

However when it comes to certain other species, then there is only so much that a pale male can take. I have a massive birch tree outside my house in the village of Turvey, which, for two massive pigeons this is home. Now in theory I don’t have a problem with this arrangement except for the fact that they have decided that my Discovery 2 is their toilet.

The result is anything but pretty as they have turned my Land Rover into a mobile pigeon portaloo. They had a nest in the tree until I recently paid a tree surgeon £250 to trim it back and get rid of the nest in the hope that they would bugger off. As the tree surgeon only had a wee sedan, it was left to me and my Discovery to get rid of the bits that he had spent the best part of a day sawing off.

This took me five trips to my local recycling centre as there is only so much that you can fit into the load area of a Discovery 2. It would’ve been more but I had also filled seven bags with logs that I had decided to put in the shed for drying.

DSo, with the pigeons supposedly a thing of the past I decided to get out my new Karcher 4 pressure washer and give my Discovery a proper post-winter clean, I had never used it before and it took about 30 minutes just to set it up before I could get cracking. There is something powerful about a pressure washer, it turns even the most weeniest of blokes into Rambo. Nothing gave me more pleasure than blasting the white pigeon poo streaks off my Discovery.

I also used a step-by-step car cleaning kit from Muc-off, this helped me restore my Discovery to its former glory. My Land Rover was at the ready and waiting to handle all that summer could throw at her. To make extra sure that the pigeons were gone for good I put a fake owl into what remained of the birch tree. It even had little shiny, silver paper bits to help scare off any future flying rats.

I was finally satisfied that I had done enough to get rid of my pigeon problem. Or so I thought. The following day when heading out of my house to my Discovery I was shocked to find that this was not the case. My poor Discovery had suffered another poo attack, and I was livid. This was war.

Any suggestions on how to solve my problem will be graciously received. Humane suggestions or otherwise, I’m getting desperate...