Ukrainian city consider getting pigeons drunk before deporting them

A city in northeastern Ukraine is considering a plan to take on the local pigeons by getting them drunk on wine and deporting them.

The radical measure was proposed to prevent a monument to poet Taras Shevchenko in Sumy from being covered in bird droppings ahead of City Day.



“Let’s give them wine-soaked bread and then deport them somewhere where they’ll wake up the next day,” Alexei Movchan, who heads the city branch of the ruling Party of Regions, said about the pigeons.

He dismissed allegations of animal cruelty by saying that deportation of inebriated birds is practiced in the Holy Dormition Pochayiv Lavra, an Orthodox Christian monastery in the country’s west. Sumy celebrates City Day on September 2.