A persistent pigeon feeder who tormented neighbours by attracting hundreds of feral birds to her home has avoided jail for breaching her antisocial behaviour order (Asbo).
And why?
The 55-year-old was handed an Asbo banning her from feeding wild birds in her back garden last October, but was arrested for a breach in April after being shopped by a neighbour.
She was ordered to do 150 hours of unpaid work at Croydon Magistrates’ Court on Monday, but lead magistrate Rose Thorn said she would not be jailed because of her mental state.
That goes to show just how useless ASBOs are.
The sentence was met with disgust by several of Foreman’s neighbours, who turned up at the court to hear the magistrates’ verdict.
I really don’t know how the reporter kept a straight face:
One woman, who did not wish to be named, said: “I’m spitting feathers….”
SNORK!
Apart from the rights or wrongs of the case & its outcome ..
ReplyDeleteIsn't it odd how, over time, common sayings take on totally different meanings ?
To me .. "I’m spitting feathers" meant that one was so dry, or in such need of a drink (of anything) that one felt as if one were spitting feathers out of a parched mouth ..
Perhaps the woman meant to say that she was "hopping mad" at the outcome .. but feared to do so, in case she be associated with the accused ..
Good point!
ReplyDeleteOne for the medics, usually. There is a small but persistent trickle of cases - usually the women are older as the obsession seems to kick in just after the menopause. The pigeon cases come to court because those are the ones where the neighbours get fed up with the guano and the other vermin which excess of food attracts.
ReplyDeleteThe difficulty is that the ladies (can be men, but they seem to look for different qualities in their attachments) are emotionally convinced they are saving the animals, whereas in reality they are damaging the local wildlife by unbalancing it and doing the pigeons no good either, as they don't learn to forage.
I dunno - maybe and HRT and Prozac cocktail would deal with it, either for the sufferer or the neighbours who have to put up with them. The other thing which can work is if they can be re-attached to a small but needy dog as that soaks up their attention and is generally incompatible with birds and excessive cat attachment.
I really don't know where to start on this, but basically the top and bottom of this appears to be that some pretentious twats have nothing better to worry about than birds crapping on their roof.
ReplyDeleteAs for the "Vermin" angle, sewers are not rife and I mean *RIFE* with rats because of waste disposal units/food washed down the plug hole after washing up/half eaten kebabs littering the streets/council refuse dumps or fortnightly bin collections, no it's some old dear feeding pigeons a crust of bread occasionally.
As for the "damaging the local wildlife by unbalancing it" comment WTF do I start on this one?
The ban on fox hunting, hare coursing, the ban on killing birds of prey, animal rights fucktards releasing mink etc.
None of this has any effect on wildlife balance, it's only senile old dears feeding pigeons that do that.
Rather than treat unruly kids with a smack round the ear, it's much more humane to tranq them up with ritalin or drug du jour.
So I suppose forced HRT on *ALL* menopausal women isn't much of a stretch, and from there forced euthanasia for persistent offenders.
Wrap it up in a "Won't someone just think of the children" and it's a done deal.
These cases do crop up occasionally with much the same structure: old and lonely woman feels sorry for the poor winged creatures (I recall reading of one case when the old dear broke in tears over seeing their 'sad little faces') and throws tons of bread out.
ReplyDeleteBut my question is: don't the pigeons get fat from all this diet? If they were yoomans munching naught but white bread there would be outrage over their diet, questions in parliament and elf experts dispatched to oversee meal times.
Maybe one very fat pigeon looks much like another, so no one cares.
"One for the medics, usually."
ReplyDeleteThere's a great reluctance to ascribe this (and compulsive hoarding, like the famous 'Moleman') to a treatable - more to the point, sectionable - mental illness.
Probably because they aren't doing so well at treating any of the others, so why add to the list?
"None of this has any effect on wildlife balance, it's only senile old dears feeding pigeons that do that."
Oh, indeed!
"But my question is: don't the pigeons get fat from all this diet? "
Birds rarely get fat, due to the energy requirements of flight. What they do do, is breed like, well, pigeons, to meet the new food source...