The law’s a pigeon

Pigeons, cats and bicycles don’t necessarily make for the best of friends

The Telegraph’s ‘Mandrake’ and the Mail Online both reported yesterday that Ben Goldsmith could be prosecuted after colliding with a pigeon whilst on his bicycle in Glasshouse Street, close to London’s Piccadilly Circus. He then took the bird it out of its misery with his shoe.

Goldsmith, the founder of the green investment business WHEB Partners and a son of the late billionaire financier Sir Jimmy Goldsmith, took to Twitter to say that the incident “really upset” both him and the “coachload of school children who watched” it. In response, an RSPB spokesman named Mark Thomas told ‘Mandrake’ that the correct thing to do would have been to have taken the bird to a vet. He added:

“A man was recently prosecuted for reversing his car over a cat that he had knocked down because he didn’t want it to suffer”.

In a separate incident, another friend’s cat caught a pigeon yesterday and carried it into her flat. Though that bird left only somewhat shaken and with a few less feathers, ‘Mandrake’s’ suggestion that “feral pigeons have rights under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981” and that “assaults can result in up to six imprisonment” is illustrative that the law can indeed be a pigeon.

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