SPINSTERS SAVE ST PAUL’S PIGEONS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18349, 29 December 1927, Page 8

SPINSTERS SAVE ST PAUL’S PIGEONS.

TRAPPERS FRUSTRATED, AND GILDED CAGE REMAINS EMPTY.

By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. Aus. and N.Z. Cable Association. (Received December 29, 8.50 a.m.) LONDON, December 28. The Christmas season witnessed an open-air pantomime around St Paul’s, where 2000 surplus pigeons, condemned by city dignitaries, resolutely refuse to die. St Paul’s pigeons are wily birds for whom sentimental Londoners have a deep affection. Thus when the compleat trappers arrived, full of optimism and* with corn to entice the birds to the gilded cage, the pigeons held a mass meeting around the piles of corn and bread distributed in safer places, by elderly spinsters, who withered the trappers through poised lorgnettes. The result was that rfo birds were caught, but the trappers, urged by a warrant of the City of London, reappeared on a holiday and rounded up hundreds. These turned out to be the healthiest and most adept at hustling the weaker birds aside and obtaining the corn. This was not desired and thus to-day there were new methods for luring away the decrepit pigeons and seizing them until two bags were filled with the lame and the halt. This method will take years, but Londoners seem determined that no pigeon shall go into the cage.