Instead of going camping this weekend, I decided to stay home and relax and watch movies. It's been pretty busy lately and I thought I'd be able to get some rest. But the the boyf who normally doesn't want to do anything decided that this weekend was the weekend that we should deal once and for all with the pigeon infestation that we have on our balcony. These pigeons are disgusting, every inch of our balcony is encrusted in their shit, including the intake for our heating and air conditioning - which means that whatever diseases they may have are most surely circulating around our apartment, killing us with every breath we take. So we buy some netting and wood, and spend the entire day putting the stuff up. It's tough work drilling into poured concrete, we took turns and recharged the drill every 15 minutes. Late that night we finally had the whole thing done, when suddenly I saw a streak of light whizzing past our balcony railing. It had to be about midnight at this point, I figured it must just be a one-off, some drunk lighting their last fireworks on the way home. But then there was another one, and another one metres from our nylon, very melt-able, netting. Turns out that some idiots decided it was a good idea to have a midnight to 2 AM fireworks display dangerously close to my building. Finally, at a quarter to two in the morning, I called the super and asked her to go down there and tell them to can it. Her response, "They're following the safety guidelines that were posted in the building."
What? It's 2 in the freakin' morning!
(Out of curiosity, the next morning, I went out to where these guidelines were posted and I checked, sure enough, it didn't say to stay away from structures while setting off your fireworks, and it also didn't say to follow noise bylaws and stop your display before 11 PM. But, it did say make sure someone responsible was in charge of your display, and, seriously, as if any sober, responsible person ever thought it was a good idea to set of fireworks at 1 am... assholes.)
So, I told the super that if she wasn't going to stop it, my next call would be to the police.
So, now, I'm 'that guy'. I didn't want to be 'that guy' but they made me. It was mostly because I was afraid they'd melt my precious pigeon netting, but also, a little bit because I didn't want to be woken by the ambulance sirens when one of them blew their hand off.
I'm starting to think that selling fireworks to just anyone is a mistake, you should have your own barge and a licence, and a million dollars of insurance, before you can do a fireworks display. There are very few people out there who are responsible enough to be able to put on a home fireworks display, and if you were really that responsible, wouldn't you just go down to the lake shore and watch the professional display anyway?
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8 comments:
Shoulda called the police. In these United States one could call police if the super were a dud.
I suppose I should have mentioned the end of the story was that immediately after my call there were no more fireworks.
Before I called the super, I felt guilty for being a jerk and calling in the middle of the night, but after she said that the fireworks display was no problem because they were following the rules, I didn't feel guilty any more.
So they followed the "rules" but aren't there noise bylaws....after 11pm it's quiet time? I'm sure she or the police could have got them to stop on those grounds no?
Umm what happend to the baby pigeons dare i ask?
baby pigeons taste just like chicken. right jen?
Hear, hear! Fireworks for amateurs, like everything else that is illicitly desirable, should be restricted to lawless international waters!
International waters! Love it, that's where all the fun is! Fun and pirates, what could be better?
Isn't pigeon supposed to be some kind of delicacy they serve in fancy restaurants? Don't they call is squab? I don't know. I evicted ours, the shit-demons as the boyf calls them. We even evicted the babies. I didn't push them off the balcony like I threatened, we put them in a box an took them down and left them in the grass to live by their wits. At least one of them survived the first night, I saw it the next morning.
I think the netting actually worked, we put a wire through the opening in the bottom and netted the top and haven't seen any in there since. So, *fingers crossed*!
Uh gad!
I just looked up squab and found a list of pigeon borne diseases! Did you know that Bob Dylan was hospitalized with histoplasmosis? Eeeyuk.
I still do not understand why they allow them for sale here. They were banned in Illinois when I was a kid. Don't remind me that's push half a century ago. And, we didn't have socialised medicine to pick up the idiot's medical bills, so another good reason to ban them.
The damn yuppies were even doing them up here until 1 or 2.
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