Flock off!
Pigeon-costumed bird-lovers Saturday clashed with employees of a pigeon-supply store in Brooklyn – where the screaming matches were so intense they had to be broken up by cops.
Animal-rights activist Tina Piña Trachtenburg corralled roughly a dozen fellow bird enthusiasts to join her outside Broadway Pigeon & Pet Supplies to protest owners Michael and Joey Scott over allegations they illegally kidnap and sell Big Apple pigeons to Pennsylvania hunters for target practice.
Trachtenburg, known as Mother Pigeon, previously told The Post she believes the Scotts raided a flock she feeds at Maria Hernandez Park fewer than two miles away April 1 to restock their bird supply.
Netting pigeons on public property, including city parks, is illegal and considered animal abuse, according to the city’s website.
Pigeon shoots are illegal in New York, but they are still legal in Pennsylvania, and while it does not appear to be illegal for a New York business to provide the birds for them, activists say it is beyond cruel.
The Scotts argued that the activists are pigeonholing the wrong people — with the brothers claiming they breed the birds they sell and aren’t required to ask what their buyers do with them.
“I can’t say that somebody didn’t come in here that I don’t know and then bring them [to Pennsylvania],” he told The Post, likening the sale of pigeons to selling feeder fish or mice used as snake food.
“That’s not my business to ask what they’re doing with the birds,” Joey said.
Back in July 2008, the store’s lawyer admitted that the shop sold birds to a pigeon broker in charge of a pigeon shooting tournament in Pennsylvania, The Post reported.
Many pigeons used for Pennsylvania target practice are illegally trapped in New York City and transported across state lines, according to a 2018 report from the New York City Bar Association.
The report found that some of the birds “suffered a slow and painful death, were denied veterinary care, and in some cases, had their heads torn off and bodies smashed by children hired to collect their bodies.”
Joey previously told The Post that his birds, peddled for about $10 a pop, have been sold for weddings, funerals and dog trainers that “kill them.
“Some people come [buy birds] to do voodoo sacrifices, I’m sure,” he added.
Michael walked away when asked by a reporter whether he sells to out-of-state hunters.
Joey said their pigeons are bred on the rooftop coop above the Bushwick building they own, are descendants of the birds they inherited from their grandfather in 1971 — and not a single one is from the street.
“Netting” pigeons has been a phenomenon for decades in the Big Apple, activists say, with 311 reports dating back to at least 2010.
Last month, a Pennsylvania man was arrested after he was caught on camera netting a flock in Manhattan, and another poacher was spotted in Jackson Heights, Queens. Activists argue the netters are becoming more brazen because “lackadaisical prosecution” has failed to deter the growing crime.
“You don’t see my brother in that picture,” Joey argued of the photo from Manhattan, adding that there are “a lot more pet shops” that are accused of netting besides his.
“They never caught me, they never caught my brother,” he said of the protesters. “The fact is that people do it all the time. But whoever [it is], they’re not selling to me.”
The protest got so heated at points that a half-dozen police officers were at the scene to try to defuse tensions, including one who had to break up several verbal spats between the pigeon store’s secretary and an activist.
A longtime customer, who declined to give his name to The Post, taunted protesters outside the shop by shaking a cardboard box of about a dozen live pigeons he just purchased for his Bronx coop.
“When people buy the birds and they abuse them, it has nothing to do with [Michael],” the customer told The Post.
“If people buy birds and do what the f–k they want, it’s none of his business,” he said. “He’s here to make money.”
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