Your backyard mystery just got weirder

Good morning from the gateway — Lake Simcoe's awake, the 400 is already packed, and Barrie's got growing pains. Let's talk about it.

Okay, so here's what's actually happening: You know how sometimes you get a story that just *screams* Barrie? This is it. Our city council actually debated the highly unlikely possibility of pigeons being the culprits behind... well, backyard defecation complaints. I kid you not. Staff told council the chances are low. Low! As if there's a medium chance, or a high chance that we're dealing with some kind of super-pigeon problem on the south end, maybe around Mapleview and Essa where all those new units are popping up. It's not the first time we've had some unusual things brought up at City Hall, but this one? This one takes the cake.

It just makes you wonder, doesn't it? What exactly is going on in these backyards that pigeons are even *in the conversation*? This isn't some deep ecological mystery about the health of Lake Simcoe, or a critical infrastructure decision for the city's future. It's... backyard poop. I guess it shows that even with another 3,000 units approved this year and traffic on Bayfield up 40% since the subdivisions opened, we still find time for the truly bizarre. Maybe we need a citizen science project, like the Christmas Bird Count, but for... this. You can't make this stuff up, can you?

This is Tara Fenn-Orillia, and that's the buzz from the gateway.

The Morning Wire crew digs into this kind of stuff daily – stream 'em live at mornings.live.