Winter is almost here. The morning sunlight is soft; beneath its slanting beams, the windows dissolve into sheets of liquid gold. A bevy of green parakeets have arrived from the north and settled on yonder silver oak tree. Bearing an uncanny resemblance to our housing society’s committee members, they now sit there and squabble all day long over lack of privacy, absence of civic sense among neighbours, and encroachment of common areas by crows. Yet aside from their raucousness they are generally well-behaved citizens.Alas, the same cannot be said of the pigeons. They sit in their hundreds on the balconies of buildings all around; they swing and sway on the cable-TV-wallah’s lines, cooing and burbling contentedly, the very picture of innocence. But all the while they are scheming, their crafty, beady eyes are on the windows around them! The inner corner of each window frame represents, to a pigeon, the ultimate in winter luxury. It is a snug place to huddle in during the chill and it also serves as a kind of wooden-seated Western-style commode from which to.well.drop the matter. The former practice can be tolerated in the name of insaaniyat; the latter is a form of biochemical bombardment that should be banned by the UN. Under the onslaught, a clear window glass becomes adorned with streaks of assorted hue, while on the window ledge below a mound of odorous guano grows till it blocks out the sunlight.Fortunately, we are well prepared to deal with this menace that threatens our borders. As with India’s nuclear doctrine, our strategy is one of passive deterrence rather than aggression. Our weapons comprise a box of wooden toothpicks, several strips of stiff paper and a tube of strong adhesive. The procedure is simple: we stick a row of toothpicks on to each strip of paper, so that the points of the toothpicks extend to about an inch beyond the edge of the strip. Once the adhesive has hardened, we simply paste the strips of paper — each with its row of toothpicks — on to the outside upper edge of each window frame.As we work at the first window, six pigeons on the balcony opposite watch. When we move on to the next window, the group deputes its fattest member to test our defenses. She wings her way across, gingerly settles upon the row of toothpicks, grimaces and flies back to her colleagues, shaking her head in disgust. Our border fencing works!We knew it would. We’ve used this strategy for six years now. Next year’s rains will destroy the toothpick fencing. But replacement is cheap; besides, the toothpicks don’t hurt the birds. Last winter, though, a guest claimed she heard a strange grating noise. When she went across to investigate, she saw a well-dined squirrel cleaning its teeth on one of the toothpicks.
