The dovecote

The dovecote was a gift from her ex, which should have hinted at things to come. It was adorable, though. It was the charming domestic white of picket fences, and went with the outdoor furniture, which was in the French provincial style. Her section was long and narrow and she set the dovecote up among the trees lining the driveway, so it could be admired on the way in and out.

Of course what it lacked was doves, and so she got three little ones. They were also adorable. They were the pure white of gulls, and their breasts were soft and when she held them gently their tiny hearts beat into her hands. And they made that slightly pathetic little cruu cruu noise that doves do.

A few weeks later, delight! She heard peeping noises coming from the dovecote. Her doves had had babies. The future beckoned.

We are now two years later. The doves have been a-shittin' and a-shaggin' and a-feudin' and a-fighting'. Long ago she stopped feeding them. Now the dovecote bulges with dove shit. The doves squeeze past it to get inside. And there are many of them, uncountable in fact, and the doveliness has gone from them because they have been a-shaggin' with the local pigeons. In fact, she describes them as now 'Well, pigeons, really'. She runs the gauntlet of them when she heads down the driveway - they shit on her car and they don't even move aside when she runs down to get the mail. She thinks if she had a headscarf and sunnies she would be channelling Tippi Hedren. 

Well que faire? as they would say in the French provincial style. What can a girl do about this Hitchockian nightmare?

She has had a lot of advice, most of it unhelpful. She has considered rat poison, but doesn't think she could emotionally manage the deaths. Some advice involved shooting one every day at random, the way you do with hostages, until they accede to her demands and Go Away. Pipe bombs and vaseline bombs have been discussed at length, but it seems a bit anti-Peace Movement and doves are supposed to represent peace (rather than how they actually behave, with the a-shittin' and a-fightin' and so on. How to get rid of the 'pigeons, really' without disturbing the peace?