Flying rat poop leads to collapse of gas station canopy
Pigeons -- flying rats, rock doves, what have you -- are probably not on anyone's favorite list of fowl, but lately they've been bringing the house down. Well, not houses exactly, but bridges and awnings if you believe the news. Last year it was reported pigeon poop helped cause the bridge collapse in Minnesota -- pigeon excreta being remarkably effective at rusting things out. Now, at a Yuma, Arizona gas station, an awning collapsed under the weight of wet guano. The folks in charge let up to five inches of dung collect on the flat awning, and when it rained, the mass of that mess brought the whole thing tumbling down. Lost in the hail of excrement: a BMW and a HUMMER. Let this be a lesson to you: beware the Columbidae.[Source: MSNBC]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
andy 7:58AM (12/23/2008)
poop happens
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fmwso 8:10AM (12/23/2008)
lol, that picture's funny!!!
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BLS 8:34AM (12/23/2008)
Pooping on people for fun and proffit.
Will 10:04AM (12/23/2008)
Overpriced autos perishing in a hailstorm of pigeon dump is hilarious too, but I think the picture's funnier.
Bc 8:20AM (12/23/2008)
Holy cow, I live right by that gas station. That is disgusting, just glad I wasn't filling up at the time!
(oh and the rain we got last week was about as much as we get every year)
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Flashpoint 8:42AM (12/23/2008)
I'm inclined to believe that the rain itself brought down the awning.
Pigeon sht is most uric acid - which is hard but, not very dense or heavy. Its almost as thin as a beehive resin.
Why would they have a flat roof in a place with an average rainfall over 8" without proper drainage.
Bc 10:27AM (12/23/2008)
Average rain fall here is about 3" per year. There is no proper stormwater system anywhere in this city, so the 1" that fell last week was almost catastrophic.
TVGenius 1:57PM (12/23/2008)
The rain we got last week wasn't much, it was Thanksgiving week that we got our 9th-highest daily rainfall ever, about 10 months' worth.
The rain last week was Tuesday and Wednesday, and the canopy didn't fall until Friday. More than likely, the drains were blocked, just like what happened at Southgate Mall here earlier this year, and the roof failed.
I guess other places must get enough rain that the crap gets washed away, and it just builds up here.
Shawn 8:21AM (12/23/2008)
I'm waiting for PETA member from Autoblog Green to jump in and say how these disease carrying flying rats shouldn't be exterminated because it destoryed a Hummer.
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LM 8:49AM (12/23/2008)
Actually pigeons aren't disease carrying. They're quite smart birds who used to be trained to carry things, hence the term "carrier pigeon".
Shawn 9:34AM (12/23/2008)
Three human diseases are known to be associated with pigeon droppings: histoplasmosis, cryptococcosis, and psittacosis.
Alex 8:54AM (12/23/2008)
eww... imagine getting soaked in all that bird poo.
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ugg.tryptophan 12:36PM (12/23/2008)
imagining...
Psipwrd 10:53AM (12/23/2008)
I was a gas station shortly after it rained. The smell of the water dripping off the awning onto my arm and driver side window was the worst. Never again (after the rain) will I take the outside pump.
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Khanh 3:31PM (12/23/2008)
I thought Guano is only referred to as bat poop. So I looked it up on both wikipedia and dictionary.com, and it mentions sea birds. I've never seen pigeons flying around large amounts of water. O_o... hmmm.
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