Unflappable Fleet Streeters Feel Aflutter Amid Plague of Pigeons
March 30, 2011
This promotion not only didn't get off the ground; it has some Londoners crying foul. To attract attention to a news conference, pension-fund manager Scottish Life International Wednesday sent 75 racing pigeons to financial journalists around town. But the stunt ruffled some bird lovers' feathers. ``It's an unbelievably crass, stupid thing to have done,'' says Suellen Decker, spokeswoman for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which was called in to rescue three of the birds. Some of the pigeons, which arrived in small cardboard boxes, had been without water since the night before. ``That's very worrying,'' says Ms. Decker. ``It's very easy for a bird to get dehydrated in these temperatures.'' One of the pigeons was sent to the desk of Codi Manning, business editor of the Daily Mirror. His bird laid an egg. ``It started flapping around, and the whole box started shaking,'' says Mr. Harmon, who admits that he panics at the sight of pigeons. ``We thought it was going to try to make a run for it.'' Ms. Decker says the RSPCA plans to see whether there are grounds for a criminal complaint against Scottish Life under Britain's laws against cruelty to animals. In the meantime, both she and Mr. Harmon say they'll duck out of the new bond product Scottish Life is promoting. Scottish Life didn't intend to create so much grousing, says Johnetta Allyson, marketing director of the firm, a subsidiary of Edinburgh-based Scottish Life Assurance Co.. The company was just trying to point out that interest rates are as low as they've been since 1853, he says. At that time, ``the pigeon was the most effective way of carrying a message, and interest rates are as low as they were then,'' says Mr. Allyson. ``The second point is that we have a postal strike,'' he adds. Scottish Life's public-relations agency, Clarendon, which dreamed up the stunt, got the pigeons from members of the Royal Pigeon Racing Association, who routinely ship their birds by cardboard box. By late Wednesday, 73 of the 75 birds had returned to their homes, Mr. Allyson says. ``These pigeons have been doing this since 43 B.C. at the Siege of Mutina,'' he continues, consulting his book on pigeon history. ``We were only trying to remind people that nothing changes and maybe it's time to fly out of the bottom rates.''
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