It was almost inevitable. As soon as the council in High Wycombe said it was thinking of culling messy pigeons in the town centre by hiring someone to catch them and break their necks - or use 'cervical dislocation', as the council report so delicately put it - the whole panoply of protestors descended.
A Facebook campaign; an internet petition; a residents' protest and letters bombarding the local papers (to kill them, wrote a lady from Lincoln, would infringe human rights because it would cause great distress to those who care about the birds. Even dafter, the council took the threat seriously and asked a lawyer to check that what they were planning to do was legal. It was.)
But from the majority of people in the area not a murmer, nor even a flutter. The fact is that although many people who live in the Wycombe area are "townies" who have moved here from the hustle and bustle of the cities, a substantial proportion have their roots in what is still a predominently rural area.
A couple of years ago one of the partridges that regularly swoop over Adams Park, even when games are being played, flew into the roof of one of the stands and collapsed, injured, onto the pitch in the middle of a Wasps rugby match. When Wasps player Josh Lewsey, a farmers's son, strode over, picked up the bird, and put it out of its misery with one professional jerk of its neck before handing it to a ballboy, he was applauded by a section of the crowd.
Some hysterics came later of course, but Lewsey was unabashed. He knew, as did most of the crowd, that he acted humanely.
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