Authorities rescued 344 pigeons from a squalid Long Island home that had at least 2 feet of droppings and bird seed on the floor.
“The droppings are so deep, we couldn’t even open the doors from room to room. I’ve never seen a house that was a pigeon coop,” said Gary Rogers, a detective and spokesperson for the Nassau County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
“It’s a horrible situation. Years and years of living like this,” Rogers said from the home on Abbot Avenue in North Merrick.
He added that Thursday is likely the first day the pigeons have gone outside, because they were born and raised inside the home. “Today is probably the first breath of fresh air they’ve had in their entire lives.”
Hazmat teams donned full body suits and oxygen masks to protect themselves from the fumes. Officials said the homeowner, Gregory Unruh, 68 also used an oxygen mask while living inside.
Rogers described the residence, which has no running water and has been deemed uninhabitable by the Town of Hempstead, as a two-story pigeon coop with birds in free flight throughout. “We found numerous baby pigeons. They’re breeding inside the house,” Rogers added.
They’ll be rehabilitated by the Nassau County SPCA and given to proper pigeon handlers.
Unruh was sent to a local hospital for evaluation.
Neighbors described him as a “recluse,” and he was known on the block as “birdman,” although no one knew how bad the situation was.
Investigators couldn’t determine if there were any dead birds inside.
“We found rats in the house, and if there were dead pigeons in the house, they were eaten by the rats,” Rogers said, adding that many live pigeons were found with rat bites.
The pigeon hoarding was discovered when the Nassau County Department of Buildings went to the residence for an unrelated issue.
They notified the NCSPCA, which obtained a search warrant from the District Attorney’s Animal Crimes Unit.