Roving gangs of bloodthirsty hunters from a strange land drive through our streets at night with stacks of cloth bags, waiting to capture their unsuspecting, innocent prey. Quickly they strike, trapping the squealing victims and slipping out of town, unsuspected.

It sounds like the plot of a "Mad Max" movie, or an Arizona Republican trying to drum up the anti-Mexican-drug-cartels vote. But it's actually happening right now in our fair city. According to The Wall Street Journal, packs of Pennsylvania hunters (or dudes who do business with them) are snatching up the city's pigeons, kidnapping and dragging them to one of our favorite neighboring states.

These kinds of stories have been considered urban legend for years, like the one about alligators roaming the sewers or our chances of ever being able to afford East Village rent.

But the WSJ says these "trappings" are real, and they can prove it. Meanwhile, we want to know: are you for or against pigeon siphoning?

The article claims that pigeons are "sold to shooting ranges for use in live trap shooting competitions where participants fire shotguns at live pigeons vaulted into the air." Our response can go any number of ways. One, there are the obvious animal rights concerns here; no one's eating these shot pigeons, so it's not like these are essential. Two, if people are going to be selling off pigeons to out-of-towners, shouldn't we be seeing that money?

With all the hunters in the country, we could solve so many problems at once -- cut down on the flying rat population, reduce the need for sneaking around our dangerous streets at night capturing these beasts, appease hunters who think we're "anti-gun" and "loony libs" or whatever, and maybe even close the MTA's budget gap.

Another way of looking at this is to choose the slightly more indefensible angle: pigeons carry all sorts of diseases. The Department of Health has linked pigeons to three dropping-related illnesses, including histoplasmosis, psittacosis and one other unpronounceable word. Which brings us to this important question:
Should the city's pigeon population be reduced... by force?
Yes -- those annoying birds are worse than a slow-moving tourist group in August.5 (71.4%)
No -- it's sicker than psittacosis to shoot defenseless creatures for anything other than food.2 (28.6%)