Yes, you read that correctly.  I am in an epic battle with some very annoying pigeons, and I’m sorry to say that, so far, they are winning.

It all started about 1.5 - 2 weeks ago when I couldn’t go to sleep because of a strange noise I was hearing.  Since I’m a college student, this means the noise started right around 4am, when I was going to bed.  I couldn’t really tell where it was coming from, and I had never heard a noise like it before.  I finally decided it was coming from the apartment above ours, and maybe it was a dog or something, whining.  So, I eventually went to sleep…

The next day I asked everyone else in our apartment if they had heard the noise, but no one had.  Well, that night I went to sleep, and this time, I woke up to the noise.  This annoying, incessant noise.  Luckily, though, Jordy also heard the noise this time — so I wasn’t going crazy.  I started to think about what it could be later that day.  I couldn’t stand listening to it for another 3 hours the next night.  After looking outside and thinking, I noticed that there were pigeons on our neighbor’s balcony.  Interesting….I’ve never seen pigeons around our apartment in the 2 years we’ve lived here.  It must be the pigeons!  So, I searched everywhere on the internet for some sounds clips of pigeon noises, and hooray, I found the noise.  Definitely a pigeon, but not it’s normal cooing noise, no, it was its nesting call.  Great, this is going on right outside my window?

That night I woke to the nesting call again, so I went to our living room and opened the balcony door.  Two pigeons freak out and fly away.  Case solved.  Kind of.  The problem is, I know what the noise is now, but I don’t know how to make them go away.  I’ve woken up 5 nights from these pigeons, and nothing I do makes them stay away for good.  I can scare them with loud noises, but only for them to come back 5 minutes later.  It seems we have a regular pigeon love shack outside on our balcony.  Another problem is that our balcony doors are stupid, and they don’t have screens.  So, one day, like usual, I opened up our balcony door just to get some air circulating.  I walk away for a while, and when I come back, there’s a pigeon standing in the door frame, looking like he’s about to come walking in.  I freak out this time and run to the door to close it.  He leaves when I go running to the door, but really, this is crazy.  Not only are the pigeons waking me up at night, they’re also trying to invade our apartment.  We can no longer open that door for long.

Basically, I’ve now gained a phobia of pigeons because they seem to be stalking me.  And I don’t like it.  Seriously, take a close look at a pigeon: they’re huge birds, red eyes, walking around like they own the place.  They’re creepy.

EDIT:  When I finished writing this post, I heard the noise.  Now it’s during the day, too?  This is horrible.  He must have known I was writing about him, and he came to give me a piece of his mind.

So, I’ve heard of McSweeney’s before, but I never took the time to actually look into any of it further, other than the fact that I knew what it was.  However, I have read “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” by the founder, Dave Eggers, and it’s a great book.  Anyway, the other day, Jordy sent me a link to an article written by Michael Ian Black for a column he has on McSweeney’s.  He’s only written 6 articles, but, in my opinion, they are all great.  Check them out here.