Pigeon Repellent
Internet round-up for the week of September 16, 2024
Heads up: Substack is telling me this post is too long for email. I refuse to make cuts because that’s what self-editing is all about. You may need to come to the site, app, or click “view entire message” to see everything.
Heya friends! Happy, happy Friday!
It’s been a pretty normal week around these parts. I’ve just been working a lot (as usual), doing a tiny bit of pitching (nothing crazy, do not alert the version of me from 4 months ago that said to slap me on sight if I pitched something again), and catching up on my shows1.
Today, I would like to regale you all with the harrowing tale of the rescue mission I performed earlier this week when a giant moth flew into our bathroom while I was on the toilet.
Let me begin by saying: I have no idea how a moth this big got into our bathroom. Our bathroom window is made entirely of glass block and has a single glass block vent. If you’ve never seen one of those before, they look like this:
Our window also has a screen in it, like this one does, which should protect from bugs (though, I do have another new little spider friend living in my shower now, but he’s a story for another day). The vent is almost closed. There’s less than a 1/4” gap in it right now because it’s been hot, and if we left it open the bathroom would be 3000 degrees and extremely humid (great for my orchid, not for my psyche).
Anyway, I was just sitting there, chilling on the toilet, when this gigantic moth came whipping over the top of the shower curtain and started doing that moth thing where they flap all over the place without really even going anywhere within inches of my person.
As you can imagine, I did not enjoy this. I do not like it when bugs go fast. I do not like it when bugs are close to me. I do not like it when bugs go fast close to me. I especially do not like it when bugs go fast close to me while my pants are down.
Just to give you some context, this was the approximate size of the moth, to scale2:
Due to the size, it’s not like I could just smush this thing. I mean I probably could have, but then I would’ve gotten that weird moth residue powder on my hand, which is gross. Plus, like — all things considered, he probably didn’t want to be in here just as much as I didn’t want him in here. And I have a soft spot for Creatures™.
I quickly jumped up and raced out of the bathroom, closing the door behind me so he didn’t go anywhere else in the house, and grabbed a glass from the kitchen. Once I returned, I managed to kind of pin him up against the shower curtain and quickly slide my hand over the top of the glass to trap him in.
Then I made my way to the back door so I could gently release him outside.
And now I need a quick intermission because I’m realizing that I also haven’t regaled you with the tale of my back stairway pigeon drama. So I’ll quickly do that now — because like any good storyteller knows, it’s best to move to a completely different topic in the middle of what you’re saying to give the backstory on something else.
A couple of months ago, we had a pigeon lay eggs in our back stairwell.
Ugh. those eggs were SO damn cute.
There was drama amongst the apartment building residents because the mom pigeon would fly away from the eggs, terrified, whenever someone walked down the stairs (which was kind of often, because that’s where the trash is and it’s also the closest exit to Clark Street, where the Taco Bell is (everyone who shares my staircase is going to Taco Bell too, I assume)). Our downstairs neighbor swore she was “dive-bombing” him, but in my experience, walking slowly and sweetly saying “It’s okay, mama!” calmed her enough to get her to stay on the nest, so I think just he had an evil pigeon-hating aura (it’s okay, he moved out).
He said he’d reached out to the landlord to “do something about them,” (evil) which of course pissed me off (did I mention I have a soft spot for Creatures™?), so I passive-aggressively went into the apartment building’s Discord chat and shared a picture of the eggs and got everyone to say how cute they were and get excited about the babies, which stopped any action against them. 😈 So they hatched, and were as adorable as expected. Here are the two lil fuzzy babies:
Everything was great, and the baby pigeons grew up, and the mom got less scared, and they all pooped everywhere and lived happily ever after. (When I say they pooped everywhere, I mean EVERYWHERE.)
About a week and a half ago, the pigeons finally came of age and flew away. Then the building manager cleaned off the staircase and installed what I guess are supposed to be holographic spinning pigeon repellents3, but appear to have turned out more like the setup for a pigeon disco.
The baby pigeons have technically the “left the nest,” but they’re still just kind of hanging around their mom’s house most of the time. (Do you blame them? Things are expensive these days.)
Now, with all that context — back to the moth.
I slid my hand off the top of the glass and the moth laid in there like it was dead. I was like “oh great, it had a heart attack while I tried to save it, of course,” and I dumped it out onto the bannister. It laid there, unmoving, and when I gently poked it with my finger, it suddenly sprung to life and flew into the air.
Then, for a brief moment, I thought to myself, “damn, I hope I didn’t bring him all the way out here to immediately be eaten by one of the pigeons,” but before I could even see if they were around he got sucked into our kitchen window A/C unit and disappeared.
The moral of the story, I guess? Don’t squeeze your ass through the tiniest hole you can find and go into someone’s bathroom when you weren’t invited, and also don’t terrify them while they’re going pee. (Also, I’m really sorry, moth. I tried. Hope you made it out of the A/C after I turned it off.)
Now before I start running out of space, let’s get in to the news of the week!
Headline of the week
Can a rodent get a ride or what?? Here’s a picture of the culprit:
And here’s a description of the incident from Reuters:
A train in Britain was cancelled after a pair of squirrels boarded the service and one refused to get off, Great Western Railway (GWR) said on Wednesday.
Staff tried to shoo the furry freeriders off when the train reached Redhill, Surrey, but one squirrel refused to disembark, GWR said.
"We can confirm that the 0854 Reading to Gatwick was terminated at Redhill after a couple of squirrels boarded the train at Gomshall without tickets, breaching railway byeclaws," a spokesperson for the railway said.
"We attempted to remove them at Redhill, but one refused to leave and was returned to Reading to bring an end to this nutty tail," they added.
RAILWAY BYECLAWS. NUTTY TAIL. Okay, Great Western Railway. I was not familiar with your game.
I do want to note here that the train was going to Gatwick airport — are we not concerned that this squirrel had a flight he was trying to catch? Like, what if he’d had this trip planned for months and is now out thousands of acorns because he didn’t buy travel insurance? Cold-blooded, man.
It’s too bad he’d never seen Fievel Goes West and was unaware of the secret mouse transport underneath every train.
Moon child
From September 29th to November 25th, Earth is temporarily being visited by a second moon (NYT gift link 😇).
Basically, an asteroid named 2024 PT5 is going to hang out for a couple of months and orbit Earth before leaving and going back into space to do its own thing for a while. Not sure who it was orbiting before, but I guess it can use Earth as a rebound planet if it wants.
Unfortunately, it won’t be visible to our nude eyes, but we can at least sleep well knowing that our solo moon has a little buddy for a couple months.
Billionaire Boys (and girls?)
First up: I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least share a link to the wreckage of the OceanGate Titan submersible that’s been found on the sea floor. That was a WEEK, huh? Billionaire hubris, what can ya do?
And now: allow me introduce you to Leslie Kenny.
Kenny fasts for 18 hours a day, eats a restrictive diet, and quit her job so she didn’t get too stressed. She only works out with blood flow restriction bands, monitors her sleep, and does headstands every day. She’s on supplements (of course), drinks “micronutrient enhanced coffee,” and has had intravenous immunoglobulin treatments that cost $32k each. And unlike others in the anti-aging crowd, she seems uncharacteristically dry in this photo.
She also got completely zinged by this line in the piece:
Although 21 may be a stretch, the Harvard-educated Kenny certainly looks considerably younger than her years, despite eschewing all tweakments.
Endearing, actually. We love to see women stepping in to a male dominated space! Age backwards, Benjamina Button! I’m keeping an eye on her and will definitely update if she chooses to release any damp photoshoots.
What I’m reading
I realized I missed sharing last month’s book club read, so I’m doing that here along with the one that I just finished this week!
First up, Lean the F*ck Out: How to Aim Lower, Get Less Done, and Find Your Happiness by my wonderful friend Talia Argondezzi.
This book somehow manages to seamlessly blend helpful tips in with excellent jokes, and I’d expect no less from Talia. It’s an excellent counterbalance to the “Lean In” and “Girlboss” movement that was so popular a couple of years ago, and I hope y’all don’t mind the color orange because most of you are getting this thing for Christmas.
Then secondly, this week I read Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple.
I LOVED this book. It’s an epistolary novel but also has some sections directly from the point of view of Bernadette’s daughter, Bee. The book is funny but still manages to have some poignant moments, and the plot is so so fun. I loved all the references to big tech, too. Highly recommend this one! (I read it in about 5ish hours — it’s definitely not super short, but it’s not hard to get through, either.)
Full disclosure: if you use my affiliate links to purchase these, a few dimes may get tossed my way.
Randomly selected animal cutie
After a dusty moth, two poop-covered pigeons, and a train-delaying squirrel, I know just what you need: opossums drinking water ASMR. Enjoy!
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
That’s it from me this week! I’ll be spending my weekend trying to enjoy some downtime and definitely not rescuing any more bugs. Have a good one!
K
Survivor started this week and it’s already off to a smashing start because everyone is insane, as always, so no complaints there. Angela is somehow still on Big Brother. The usual.
Scale is based on how scary the moth was.
The internet says either repellent or repellant is acceptable, so I went half and half.
Thank you for the pigeon/moth saga, v entertaining 😂
All scale should be based on scariness. Thank you for being a pigeon advocate!