Canadian woman battling crippling disease caused by pigeon poop

Canadian woman battling crippling disease caused by pigeon poop

people covered in bird droppings

Canadian woman battling crippling disease caused by pigeon poop

PETER POWER – THE GLOBE AND MAIL

In the span of a few weeks, Erica Richards has been transformed from a vibrant 23-year-old woman who loved nature to a person battling for her life.

In early January, the Fredericton woman contracted a potentially fatal condition called cryptococcal meningitis, a fungal disease carried in the feces of pigeons.

The debilitating illness attacks the spine and brain, causing severe swelling. It left her confined to a hospital bed in a state of delirium for weeks.

But the most devastating side effect is that Ms. Richards is now blind.

“Be aware of this disease. It could kill a child in a heartbeat,” Ms. Richards said in an interview from her hospital bed.

“It could kill a senior in a heartbeat without you even having to worry about the symptoms. It comes on that fast. If you don’t realize the symptoms, it could kill you, too.”

Her emotional warning comes on the heels of city council’s approval earlier this month of a recommendation that it toughen its animal control bylaw to allow for fines for feeding pigeons. Once the amendment is drafted and declared law, it will give the city’s bylaw enforcement officers the power to ticket and fine offenders.

Ms. Richards said she decided to go public about her illness after learning about a recent newspaper story about a problem with pigeon poop in the city.

“Please don’t feed the pigeons,” she said. “Try to shoo them away if you see them. … It (the disease) is horrible. The pain that you get from this disease is crippling.

“The after-effects are with you for life and you just can’t stop thinking about it. I just want other people to know and try to stay away from pigeons.”

Oddly enough, Ms. Richards said she has no recollection of ever being anywhere near pigeons.

“I am still wondering to this day where I got it,” she said. “I could have stepped in it and brought it into the home. I just don’t know.”

Ms. Richards said the symptoms started with a migraine headache that wouldn’t go away. She was admitted to hospital on Feb. 10 after many days of intense head pain. Shortly after, she went into a coma-like state.

“When I woke up I thought I had a mask over my eyes, but I was wrong. I was blind. I was recently told that I will be blind for the rest of my life. This is a tough thing for a 23-year-old to go through. … My world crumbled around me.”

Ms. Richards said the odds of surviving the disease are 50-50.

“However, I managed to make it through,” she said, battling tears. “I don’t know how but I am still here, and I am glad because I get to warn everyone else of this.”

Cristin Muecke, the Health Department’s regional medical officer, confirmed the disease is often associated with pigeon droppings. She said the illness can’t be spread person to person and is more common with someone who has immune problems.

Ms. Richards, however, said she has never had a problem with her immune system and that’s what’s so puzzling about contracting the affliction.

“I do not want anyone else to suffer this agonizing disease and I ask anyone who is feeding pigeons to stop,” she said. “It’s not just a matter of keeping your neighbourhood clean … it’s a matter of keeping people healthy.”

About Pigeon Patrol:

Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.

Contact us at 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD, (604) 585-9279 or visit our website at www.pigeonpatrol.ca

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Dozens of ‘decorated’ pigeons found dead in New Zealand

Dozens of ‘decorated’ pigeons found dead in New Zealand

Pigeon covered in tinsel is investigated

Pigeons and other birds have been found around the New Zealand capital of Wellington with Christmas decorations attached.

 

Originally By Lisa Jane Harding, CNN

(CNN) Injured and dead pigeons covered in tinsel and other decorations have been turning up in New Zealand, and animal rights campaigners are worried.

The Royal New Zealand Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) said it received up to 30 calls in recent weeks reporting sightings of sparrows and dead pigeons with tinsel intentionally tied to their bodies.
“Many try to pry the foreign objects off their bodies with their beaks and feet, becoming further entangled and preventing them from eating, drinking and flying.
With others, the decorations are wrapped so tightly it completely cuts off their blood circulation,” SPCA spokeswoman Jessie Gilchrist told CNN.
“Those that do survive and arrive at our center are often in a very bad state, they are so malnourished and distressed that we have had to humanely euthanize them.”

The decorations can prevent the birds from eating, drinking and flying, leaving them to starve to death.

Since 2015, the charity said there has been over thirty cases of “decorated” birds found dead or with injuries severe enough to require euthanasia. Most of them being dead pigeons.
On Tuesday, SPCA officers were called to a house in Kilbirnie, a suburb of the capital Wellington, where they rescued several birds covered in decorations and paint.
The birds were in a distressed but otherwise healthy condition.
“One pigeon had quite bright red Christmas tinsel wrapped around its wings and then the top of its head had been painted with red paint as well as its wings had been tipped with red paint,” Gilchrist said.
While charges have yet to be laid against the owners of the house, Gilchrist said the case “remains an ongoing investigation.”
Sparrows and pigeons — which forage for food on the ground, in shrubs or shallow water — face a number of threats from predators, including foxes and racoons, as well as larger birds and snakes.
But humans are perhaps the biggest threat to the birds. In 2015, New Zealand recognized all animals, including birds, as “sentient” under law, extending protections and making it easier for charities like the SPCA to prosecute people for animal cruelty.
One stated purpose of the law was to “remove uncertainty around the ill-treatment of wild animals by targeting acts of wilful or reckless ill-treatment.”

About Pigeon Patrol:

Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.

Contact us at 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD, (604) 585-9279 or visit our website at www.pigeonpatrol.ca

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Pigeons to be banished for threatening tourists in Spanish town of Cadiz

Pigeons to be banished for threatening tourists in Spanish town of Cadiz

Cadiz Cathedral in Spain is facing a pigeon infestation.

Cadiz Cathedral in Spain is facing a pigeon infestation.

Laura Perez Maestro, CNN • Updated 13th December 2018

(CNN) — It’s always nice to share a meal with the locals on vacation, except when the locals steal your food, smash your plate, defecate on the table — and then fly away. Cadiz has been facing this exact pigeon problem.
That’s the situation in the southwestern Spanish port town of Cádiz where pigeons have been terrorizing tourists to such an extent that local authorities are now taking steps to banish thousands of birds.
“We are not exaggerating, the pigeons are not scared of humans any more,” Carlos Fernández, the manager of one of the restaurants in Cádiz’s beautiful Cathedral Square, tells CNN.
“They throw themselves at the food even when there are clients seating ready to eat it. They push glasses, plates and jars on to the floor and it’s a real mess.”
And when tourists give up on Cádiz’s sunny terraces and move inside, there’s still no escape from the birds, Fernández says.
“Even inside the restaurant, they come in, they know where the food is and that we don’t do anything to them, they are not scared”, adds Fernández.
Brazen Pigeons feed off a table eating leftovers

Brazen Pigeons feeding directly from the table.

He says that the population of pigeons is now so high that customers pestered by the pigeons are being scarred by their experiences. “They don’t come back.”
It’s not a pretty picture either. The square’s winged residents “decorate” building facades and restaurant tables and chairs. They even make the ground difficult to walk on, says Fernández.
After a pigeon census by the city council decreed that the bird population of 9,000 was three times as many as Cádiz could sustain, authorities decided to take steps.
The plan is to catch and relocate 5,000 pigeons over a period of a year instead of culling them. They’ll then be transported at least 170 miles away — a distance hoped to discourage them from returning.
Alvaro de la Fuente, of the council’s environmental department, says the city wants “a respectful and sustainable solution to reduce the impact of the birds on cities like Cádiz.”
He adds that by relocating rather than exterminating the birds, Cádiz hopes to “establish a logical equilibrium where the cohabitation between humans and birds doesn’t damage either.”
The local government is confident this project will work because, although pigeons have strong homing instincts, once you take them beyond 170 miles from their home they tend to stay and settle in their new surroundings.
Some 3,000 leaflets instructing people to stop feeding the birds are also being distributed to make the change a little bit easier.close up of pigeon

Health risks

Cádiz’s hoteliers, who say they’ve lost 20% of their business because of the pigeons and warned of health risks to their employees, welcome the relocation plan but want it implemented ASAP.
“It’s been years since we brought up the problem and started talking with the city hall,” says Antonio de María, president of Cádiz hoteliers association, Horeca.
“A few months ago, we were presented with a plan to move the pigeons to another city but they now say they need a health assessment on the pigeons that will be moved, so the project keeps getting delayed.”
Cádiz is not the only city with bird problems. In November, Rome’s authorities began using falcons to drive thousands of starlings out of the ancient city.

 

Inside the fascinating and sometimes brutal world of pigeon racing in China

Inside the fascinating and sometimes brutal world of pigeon racing in China

Pigeon racer holds prized bird

By Karoline Kan, CNN • 6th April 2019

Every day during the racing season, 55-year-old Zhang Yajun wakes at 4 a.m. and carefully loads bamboo cages containing his 76 cherished racing pigeons into a van. Then he drives up to 200 kilometers (124 miles) from his Beijing apartment to release them. They are in training for the October and November racing season, during which time millions of dollars can be won in total prize money across races.

Zhang is just one of some 100,000 pigeon breeders living in Beijing, according to Sun Yan, the deputy general-secretary of the Beijing Changping District Racing Pigeons Association.
“Pigeon racing is a culture, but it’s also a sport,” Sun says.
On a crisp fall morning, Zhang opens the cages in a cornfield at Niutuo in Hebei province, 80 km (50 miles) south of Beijing. Forty minutes later, he uses his phone connection to a rooftop camera to watch the birds arriving home. He’s happy with their speed.
Zhang, who was a state-owned beverage factory manager before retiring in the early 2000s, says he spends about 100,000 yuan ($14,900) a year on his pigeons. That covers food, medicine, race entry fees and transport costs for training sessions — as well as equipment such as his rooftop camera gear.
Each spring, Zhang says, some 100 pigeons are born on his roof but by fall only about 20 are left. The rest have either succumbed to illness or died of injuries suffered from hitting telegraph poles or other obstacles. Or else they just got lost on the way home.
But pigeon racing also has a darker side.
Zhang says “bird-napping” — when pigeons are baited and netted during training sessions before being sold off — is a common problem.

And then there is the cheating.

In April last year, two men hid their birds in milk cartons and caught a bullet train in Henan before releasing them in Shanghai, 750 km (466 miles) away. But the birds’ unusually fast speed aroused suspicion, and the men were fined and given suspended three-year prison sentences for fraudulently obtaining prize money totaling about $147,000.

 

However; Beijing is becoming less and less friendly to bird fanciers.

In the spring of 2017, under a city beautification campaign targeting two-story buildings in the lanes known as hutongs, many rooftop pigeon lofts were subsequently demolished.
The government classified them as illegal buildings.
Breeder Zhang Jian says four large pigeon cages on his roof were demolished, although he still surreptitiously keeps four other cages housing about 100 pigeons. Most of his neighbors have known Zhang Jian since he was a boy and he says they understand his passion for the birds.

 

About Pigeon Patrol:

Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.

Contact us at 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD, (604) 585-9279 or visit our website at www.pigeonpatrol.ca

Rescuers Looking For Owner Of Mysterious Bedazzled Pigeon

Rescuers Looking For Owner Of Mysterious Bedazzled Pigeon

Image may contain: bird

Blinged out Bird!

A lot of us look at pigeons less than fondly – but clearly not all of us. A bird shelter in Arizona, USA, is looking for the owner of a pigeon found wearing a rhinestone-covered vest. The bird, now nicknamed  ‘rhinestone bird’ and ‘Liberace’, was given to the Fallen Feathers rescue and rehabilitation facility for birds in Phoenix.

According to local reports, the pigeon was found by a woman in Glendale, wearing a blingy flight suit.

The woman said he wouldn’t fly away and she was afraid an animal would eat him, so she turned in the bedazzled bird to Judy Kieran – the founder of Fallen Feathers.

The bedazzled bird received instant online fame once Judy shared his picture on Facebook a week ago, in hopes of tracing his owner. Comments quickly flooded in, ranging from ‘fabulous’ to ‘fancy’ to ‘rhinestone birdy’.

“Looks like it’s maybe El Chapo’s pigeon with that fancy gold encrusted vest,” wrote one person in the comments section. “You have to name him Elvis!!!” joked another.

In fact, the lost bird received so much attention that Judy shared some better pictures later.

(We must say he’s a fabulous bird)

“Apparently he did belong to somebody, because he does keep going to cages and being as friendly as he is, he’s missing his home,” said Judy.

The search is still underway for Rhinestone Pigeon aka Liberace’s owner.

Have a Pigeon Problem?

Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.

Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products eight years in a row.

Contact us at 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD, (604) 585-9279, or visit our website at www.pigeonpatrol.ca