Catch the pigeon... police probe claim that dastardly vagrants are eating birds
‘Street drinkers have been using bird seed to help them catch pigeons and put them in a rucksack’
IT SOUNDS like the kind of apocryphal tale that might do the rounds of social media or be told at length down your local pub. After all, accounts of homeless street drinkers using bird seed to entice pigeons into sacks for nefarious purposes do sound rather far-fetched.
But that is precisely what police in Exeter are investigating, following reports of birds being taken from streets in the city centre in a mysterious spate of bird snatching. And if that was not bizarre enough, there are now even suggestions that vagrants may be indulging in what one officer described as “blatant pigeon eating”. Devon and Cornwall Police were called after traders on Exeter’s Sidwell Street market said they spotted two men stuffing more than a dozen pigeons into a rucksack.
The reports first surfaced when Sarah Giles, a police community support officer (PCSO) wrote on Twitter: “While doing the rounds of #sidwellstreet #exeter I have had news of #pigeons being captured for food. We will be looking into this.”
PCSO Giles, who regularly patrols Sidwell Street, had been talking to traders about problems with street drinkers when the pigeon-snatching incident was brought to her attention. One trader later described how she spotted a street vagrant enticing pi- geons with bird seed. “It was then his mate would pounce on the pigeon and stuff it into the rucksack,” she said. “They managed to get 14 in, even with them flapping about. I was horrified.”
The trader, who asked to remain anonymous, said the men attempted the same trick the following day, but were less successful. PCSO Giles added that geese and swans had reportedly been previously captured by the River Exe by a group of street drinkers.
She said: “Many are alcoholics, [who] to keep a certain consumption level, will drink continuously… now we’re eating pigeons, now we’re killing seagulls. It escalates.”
The pigeon snatching took place a week after a seagull was killed on the same street. Shoppers, including small children, watched in horror as a woman, who was described as very drunk, reportedly stamped on the bird.
In Sidwell Street yesterday, Luke Salisbury, 46, originally from Dawlish, but now homeless, speculated: “I reckon junkies took them to sell to some dodgy trader to pay for their next fix. I heard of one case in the south west where they were snatching cats and selling them and inspectors found meat from all sorts of animals in food tests.
“Mind you, I can’t imagine the ordinary street pigeons taste very nice. It’s wood pigeons you should be eating.”
Tia Radford, 19, who works in the Hotrods and Harlots hair salon, a few yards from where the pigeons were taken, said: “It’s disgusting. I can’t think how people can go that far. I know pigeons are vermin, but it’s so cruel to stuff them into bags like that.”
An Exeter charity whose outreach workers are in contact with the city’s vagrants said it was helping police to try to resolve the issue.
Devon and Cornwall Police said: “This is being investigated as causing unnecessary suffering under the Animal Welfare Act 2006. It is believed that street drinkers have been using bird seed to help them catch pigeons and put them in a rucksack. We can’t even begin to speculate on their motives.”