Wichita State’s parking garage, built in 2017, provides additional parking on a campus where lots are often full. Pigeon spikes, also known as bird spikes, were added to the building. They are used to deter birds from nesting and roosting on ledges or other structures, like parking garages.
Obviously, the university doesn’t want birds, specifically pigeons, in the parking garages. But my question is, why not?
Pigeons, in the grand scheme of things, are relatively harmless. All they really do is poop on the occasional car and eat our trash off the ground. Pigeons can’t even make nests properly because, for years, humans used them as messengers. Humans have domesticated pigeons for so long that they don’t know how to make their own nests anymore. They relied so much on us that they evolved to always want to be near us. That’s why pigeons don’t head south for the winter; it’s literally now in their nature to stick near humans.
Once humans advanced in technology and found better ways to send messages, we just abandoned pigeons and decided they were pests. For years, pigeons were our loyal companions, akin to horses or dogs, and in a flash, we just left them behind because we couldn’t use them anymore. We’re constantly treating them like trash when all they’re doing is what we programmed them to do through years and years of labor. And now we complain that they’re in our cities, and we buy spikes to keep them out of our parking garages. It just seems a little messed up to me.
It’s like if we started cutting down trees on campus to get squirrels to go away because there was too much roadkill. The issue wouldn’t be the squirrels; it would be us. It raises a bigger issue in this whole discussion: how is it fair that we invade the space of wildlife – like pigeons or raccoons or squirrels – and then, when they evolve to live alongside us, we hurt them for it? The way humanity has treated pigeons as a whole could be seen as a larger metaphor for how we use and abuse resources and never properly address the fallout from our actions.
Maybe I’m getting too worked up over the university wanting to eliminate a pest problem. Or maybe there is a deeper conversation to be had, but that’s just my opinion. I’m sure plenty of other people have plenty of different thoughts. But I will say this, the next time you see a pigeon, I encourage you to not look at them as pests but as creatures just trying to survive the only way they know how to. Wichita State shouldn’t be trying to keep them out; they should be letting the pigeons roam free. So the next time you see a pigeon, stop and give it some food; they’re not just birds, they’re our friends too.
