For the birds

Remembering that Mayor Sheila Dixon has dubbed the first half of August the “311 Community Challenge,” I decided to call the Baltimore city services hotline Monday evening when I strolled past a deceased pigeon lying upside-down (re-enactment) on the sidewalk in Charles Village.

After a short hold, a woman picked up the phone and informed me that sanitation workers are “not going to come all the way out there to pick up a dead bird.” If I wished to throw it in a trash can, she said, they would pick it up eventually. Or, could I wait for a street sweeper to come?

“So,” I asked, “it can just rot in the street as far as the city is concerned?”

The 311 woman told me that it’s like a rat dead in the street. Of course they’re not going to run all over town to pick those up, but if I was concerned about avian illnesses, I could call animal control.

-ANDY ROSEN, Daily Record Business Writer