The Icky

Kristi lives in a neat converted warehouse run by Artspace. It has one major problem: pigeons (a.k.a. sky-rats). They simply love the very high, dark rafters of the common courtyard interior. The courtyards have some nice, open skylights which they use as doors. The management of the complex is well aware of the problem, but simply refuse to do anything about it. Save one instance, when they put up spikey things on the outside patio so that the business located here can have catered parties (sans pigeon droppings in the cake). I have been very diligent about discouraging the pigeons using a squirt gun loaded with cayenne peppered water. This works but as soon as you let up for even a day, they are back. Needless to say, the entire interior of her building is covered in guano. I drafted a nice letter to the management about he problem, but haven't heard a thing. Last weekend, I gained access to the roof and put up plastic chicken wire around the seven 2.5ft by 50ft openings that the pigeons use to get into the courtyard. Today, I ran into our security guy, Jonah, who said that the building manager, Mandy (364-1019 whom I have never been able to get a hold of), told him, "You can't do that, take it down." Needless to say, I am livid. Tomorrow, I will be calling the Salt Lake Valley Health Department, hiring a lawyer, and doing my very best to find out who Mandy Beeler's superior is. I feel strongly that this situation is very unsanitary, even for a healthy person. John, our next door neighbor, won't let his dog walk across the courtyard floor. I also think that Kristi's trip to the hospital last month was due to the pigeon crap. You can imagine this is going to be a problem now that K is nearly neutropenic and about to enter the bone marrow transplant, which will leave her even more compromised. The picture above is what a typical hand-rail looks like inside the building. The picture below is the floor underneath one of their nests. The great thing happens when the tenants of the art studios hose the pigeon poo off the catwalk onto our resident patio space below [sic], makes a lovely sludge for us to walk through on our way to garage and garbage dumpster.