Last Monday, two firefighters found eight badly mutilated pigeons in Oostzaan after diving training. “There was a pigeon in the middle of the road. That in itself is strange because it did not want to move aside. Then we stopped to see what was going on. It turned out that he had a cut wing,” says firefighter Gerrit-Jan Mars. “That’s not right, who would do something like that?”
After that pigeon, seven more followed, on their way back from the Mars exercise. “It had just happened, because they were all still bleeding. And I had blood on my clothes myself from catching them. So they were probably thrown out of a car and they were all there waiting for bad times.”
The birds were in such bad shape that Mars decided to take them to the game and bird sanctuary in Krommenie. Bird caretaker Nina Schouten received the pigeons and was in shock. “I thought: what kind of idiocy is this? Who the hell thinks to do this to an animal? And to release them next to the highway without a chance of survival. That’s intense.”
Design
“Of course, every bird loses a feather once in a while. But this is really deliberate mutilation. So that was really intense when we got them in. Really intense that someone did this intentionally,” says Schouten.
Whether all eight pigeons survive the mutilation is still difficult to predict, says Schouten. “The pigeons of which only the feathers have been cut, will succeed anyway, because they can simply follow their natural moulting pattern.” There are also pigeons where the meat has been cut, with them it depends on how badly it has been affected. “If it doesn’t work out and the shafts and wings are too badly damaged, then unfortunately we will have to put them to sleep,” says Schouten.
The fire department has reported animal abuse. The big question remains why the birds are so beaten up. So far, no suspects have been arrested.
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