Work getting you down lately? Are you tired of London, tired of life? Are the chill winds blowing in from the North and the dark nights drawing in slowly sapping your will to endure?
Is the mere thought of setting your alarm for 7am to cram yourself into a packed commuter train for 45 minutes, steam rising from your rain-damp clothes, enough to fill you with a sense of all-consuming dread?
Well, do we have a job opportunity for you! Why not pack it all in and move to Thailand to frighten pigeons – on a professional basis?
Thae Pae Gate, an ancient wall in Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand’s largest city) is a popular tourist destination. Like all such places, it’s become a site of pilgrimage for people who want a truly epic Instagram snap.
‘But what on Earth,’ you ask, ‘has all of this got to do with scaring pigeons?’
Well, calm down, because we’ll tell you: many of the tourists who visit Thae Pae specifically want a photograph of themselves with the birds fluttering in the background.
The problem is that most of the time the pigeons are simply hanging out, being pigeons – which isn’t very photogenic.
Thankfully, enterprising pigeon hawkers have found a way to solve this problem and help tourists achieve the perfect shot.
Charging 20 baht (around £0.53), they stamp their feet and wave flags, thus galvanizing the pigeons into flying around and providing the perfect backdrop. Which really takes ‘doing it for the gram’ to whole new levels.
One of the new ‘pigeon spookers’ is Noon, 30, who says she earns around 350 Thai baht (£9.29) a day (which, admittedly, isn’t a lot).
But the money does help to ‘pay for her daughter’s school fees’.
Be warned though, council officials in Chiang Mai are now cracking down on the bird scarers.
The number of pigeons in the area is increasing, raising concerns about the effect of the birds’ waste products on the historic city walls as well as spreading disease and being a general nuisance.
Despite previous warnings and arrests, nine vendors were caught in the latest raid by police and government officials on this week.
The municipality has now raised the fine to THB 20,000 for anyone caught selling bird-feed in the area.
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