Two artists hope the sand-covered area known as PARK, the old Park Hotel lot, soon will become fertilized by nature's creatures.
A $2,000 Ohio State University Faculty Research Enhancement Grant is funding a project by Pomerene Center for the Arts Director Anne Cornell and Amy Youngs.
The plan is to discourage 10 pairs of selected pigeons from roosting in unwanted areas and relocate them to PARK. The Pigeon Relocation and Management Project will use an effective, safe and humane deterrent system, recommended by the Pigeon Control Advisory Service.
Youngs, an associate professor in the department of art at Ohio State University, said part of the reason for the grant is to provide new types of research for artists. The research will be geared toward the interaction of the birds and humans.
"We're interested in if it changes peoples' views of the pigeons or interactions," Youngs said. The answers will come by talking to the community or asking for comments to be posted on squabblog. wordpress.com.
"If you look at pigeons, which are the rats of the sky, at one point in the history of humankind they were the first domesticated fowls," Cornell said. "They were an agricultural animal. Over time, we've forgotten how to make them useful to us, but they have not forgotten that we are useful to them."
Pigeon excrement is a natural fertilizer, and with urban gardening becoming a popular trend, Cornell thought the use of PARK would be a perfect fit.
Space at PARK has been devoted to a rain garden and a grass wall, and when an 8-foot by 8-foot pigeon loft is complete by late August, it will be placed in a sand-covered section and homing of the pigeons will begin.
"The way to relocate pigeons is you put up spikes where you don't want them so basically they don't land anymore ... at the same time you offer them a new place to land and you do an initial feeding program around this new space," she said. "In cities that actually are effective in controlling their pigeon population, this is the method."
A concerted feeding project will involve the installation of a coin- operated vending machine that will dispense grain for feeding the pigeons.
When pigeons relocate to the space, they'll freely swoop in and out of the space, landing in the loft. The excrement will drop through the bottom of the loft and onto the ground to fertilize the space. Once the space is fertilized, the loft can be moved for the pigeons to fertilize another patch.
Cornell said two pair of pigeons made the lot their home in summer 2010. Popcorn left on the ground after movies were shown on the wall and attracted the birds, which can be found perched on the broken wall.
"Pigeons mate for life. They're very home oriented, so they set up a home and they stay there," Cornell said. "It's not like we're creating a pigeon problem -- there are pigeons here -- we're just moving them to a place where it doesn't matter where they are."
During a recent trip to Venice, Italy, Youngs witnessed interaction between the birds and humans that has her excited about the local project.
"People were just joyfully laughing and feeding the pigeons and trying to get them to land on their arm," she said. "It was really interesting because it was in a very famous square with beautiful architecture and people were not taking pictures of the buildings. They were taking pictures of the pigeons."
Source: Coshocton Tribune
