7A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2018
Tiny Micro-Chip Now
In The Ear: Available!
A customer
waits for an
order outside
a food truck
as pigeons
fly around the
area.
Now
You See
It...
Colin Murphey
The Daily
Astorian
Pigeons: Species came from Europe
Continued from Page 1A
potential of accumulated drop-
pings to lead to infectious dis-
eases. He and other citizens
urged the city to ban the feed-
ing of pigeons, concerned
about how the birds’ acidic
droppings might also damage
buildings.
There was the house in
Uniontown a lot of people
called “the Tippi Hedren house”
after the actress who played
the ill-fated heroine in Alfred
Hitchcock’s classic 1963 hor-
ror film “The Birds.” One, if not
both sides, of the house’s gable
roof were constantly swarm-
ing with pigeons — not the best
look for an area that was, at the
time, looking to rebuild and
rebrand itself.
Historian John Gooden-
berger had just returned from
college in the late 1980s, hop-
ing to make his way in his
hometown. A new ban on feed-
ing pigeons was in effect. The
city was not under siege, but
pigeons were definitely on peo-
ple’s minds.
“I remember an unnamed
leader of an unnamed institu-
tion chasing a poor old woman
with a walker down the water-
front because she was feeding
pigeons,” Goodenberger said.
Berney, in a memo to the
City Council in 1981, wrote
“I see very little difference
between encouraging pigeons
and feeding rats. One differ-
ence, of course, is that some
people like pigeons, but no one
likes rats.”
In news articles and let-
ters, some people shot back,
proclaiming their love of the
pigeons and the joy they felt in
feeding them, while others said
enough was enough.
“You were either for them
or against them,” Goodenberger
recalled. “There was no middle
ground.”
Astoria, neither truly urban
or truly rural, has long main-
tained uneasy relationships
with its local wildlife, suffering
occasional panic attacks about
whether a particular population
of animals is growing too large
and might overrun the town.
This year, some Astorians
have wondered about the deer
— another animal that evokes
strong love-hate emotions.
They feel like they’ve seen even
more wandering through neigh-
borhoods. In the late 1940s and
early 1950s, the city declared a
war on the rats. In the 1980s, it
was the pigeons’ turn.
Rock pigeons
Oregon is home to a native
pigeon, the band-tailed pigeon,
a swift-flying purple and gray
bird found in forests in the west
Cascades. But the pigeons in
downtown Astoria are no differ-
ent from pigeons found in any
other U.S. city. They are rock
pigeons, an invasive species
introduced from Europe.
A white, calico or tan pigeon
might show up in flocks from
time to time, likely an escapee
or the descendant of an escapee
from someone who keeps hom-
ing pigeons. But rock pigeons
are, for the most part, blue-gray
with bronze, green and purple
necks. Red of eye. Pink of foot.
They bob, strut and coo. They
peck at questionable leftovers
on sidewalks. They are prone
to startling up in a heart attack
of furiously beating wings and
scattered feathers.
Several years after Berney
asked city leaders to declare
pigeons a nuisance and as
more complaints about the
birds rolled in, the City Council
looked at its options.
They could put interlocking
spikes on tops of buildings to
discourage pigeons from land-
ing or roosting there, but that
would only push the birds else-
where. They could hire some-
one to routinely trap and kill
pigeons in a humane way.
Maybe they could give them
feed laced with a birth control
pill.
Or, they could cut off the
obvious source of food: the peo-
ple who scattered crumbs.
In December 1984, the city
established a six-month mor-
atorium on feeding pigeons in
one section of downtown. One
month in, the owner of Shallon
Winery on Duane Street begged
the City Council to extend the
boundaries of the no-feeding
zone to 16th Street.
People had started traveling
to the outskirts of the ban area to
feed pigeons, he told the council.
The Clatsop County Historical
Society planned to turn a build-
ing near the winery into the Her-
itage Museum, but Mayor Edith
Henningsgaard was concerned
about future problems around
the building if people continued
to feed pigeons nearby.
Nearly five months later,
the City Council would pass an
emergency ordinance banning
the feeding of pigeons from
Eighth Street to 16th Street,
adding an extra six blocks to the
original area. People who con-
tinued to feed pigeons, or any
birds, in this area risked landing
a $25 fine.
The rule would be modified
again to include Uniontown and
the Tippi Hedren house. It later
morphed into a general prohibi-
tion against feeding wildlife in
the city limits.
Crews ended up removing 5
tons of stuff and garbage from
campsites, enough to fill four
large dumpsters donated by
Recology Western Oregon. The
operation cost the city $4,679.
Before the sweep, Police
Chief Geoff Spalding said any
personal possessions recovered
from campsites would be held
at the police department for up
to 30 days for people to claim.
But nothing was saved.
City employees and leaders
present at the sweep told Mayor
Arline LaMear’s homelessness
solutions task force Tuesday
it was difficult to distinguish
between trash and personal
possessions. Besides, Spalding
said, the police department had
nowhere to store possessions.
Crews did leave two camps
untouched, hoping to contact
the people they knew had been
living there before they went to
move anything.
Vernon Hall, an advocate for
the homeless who had been liv-
ing in the woods until he found
housing, said he could see the
different sides of the issue. He
helped police communicate
with the homeless this summer
when the city felt it could no
longer ignore the extent of the
camping.
Hall also helped city crews
clean up sites in November,
but he was upset that noth-
ing had been saved from the
camps. Bicycles and tents were
tossed along with other posses-
sions. Meanwhile, the one or
two campers he believes were
causing most of the trouble in
the woods are still out in the
community.
“You guys can say you did
good but nothing good came
out of that sweep,” he said.
Advocates had worried the
sweep would simply displace
people in time for winter, when
access to shelter is even more
crucial.
Annie Martin, president of
the Astoria Warming Center
board, noted the sweep hap-
pened well before the emer-
gency shelter opened. Up to the
day of the sweep, a number of
homeless campers said they still
didn’t know where they were
going to go, while others simply
moved deeper into the woods.
On Tuesday, Spalding told
the task force he was calling the
camp cleanup a success, but he
knows people were displaced
— something he feared would
happen despite efforts to con-
nect people to services.
“And that’s the big ques-
tion,” he said. “Where has
everyone gone?”
He asked the group how the
city should move forward on
future cleanups.
City Councilor Cindy Price,
who was present at the sweep,
suggested there might be a bet-
ter way to communicate about
or sort through items left at
camps to determine what was a
personal possession that should
be saved and what was trash.
Still, she praised the cooper-
ation the campers showed and
the partnership between groups
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Not the end
Of course, the feeding pro-
hibition was not the end of the
pigeons. Flocks still flash over-
head between downtown build-
ings and coo from their roosts.
One pigeon walked right into
the Bridge and Tunnel Bot-
tleshop and Taproom on Duane
Street this summer while owner
Dwayne Smallwood watched.
It wandered through, checked
things out and left without buy-
ing a thing.
Micha
Cameron-Lattek,
co-owner of the nearby Street
14 Cafe, suspects it’s the same
pigeon he’s seen patrolling out-
side the cafe door.
“It would just bob around,
left to right. In the summer,
when the door was propped
open, it got courageous and
walked in a few times,” he said.
“We had to ask it to leave.”
Homeless: ‘Where has everyone gone?
Continued from Page 1A
Now
You
Don’t!
to clean up the sites and assist
campers.
Since July, Clatsop Commu-
nity Action has had around 98
homeless people come through
the doors seeking help. As of
this week, the agency was able
to place about 44 percent of
them into housing.
“We move ahead one house-
hold at a time,” said Elaine
Bruce, the group’s executive
director.
An estimated 30 people
were living in the woods around
Astoria this summer, social ser-
vice groups have said. After
police began tagging camps
with cleanup notices, seven
people who said they were liv-
ing in the woods visited Clatsop
Community Action.
Three of them were referred
to Helping Hands, which offers
a variety of services to home-
less people at its new facility
in Uniontown. Helping Hands
was a day away from open-
ing the new facility when the
cleanup occurred.
Two of the three people
referred there, including a man
in need of hip replacement sur-
gery, are still at the facility and
participating in programs.
But some of the others who
initially sought help have not
returned to Clatsop Community
Action.
“It’s not unusual,” Bruce
said. “In fact, it’s the norm for
sort of a progression of engage-
ment, especially with those that
have been chronically home-
less. It’s an issue of choice. It’s
an issue of trust.”
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