Ignoring me, she looked up at the pigeons sitting on the…

““Ignoring me, she looked up at the pigeons sitting on the windowsills, which this year were so caked with droppings that they looked quite disgusting. The pigeons were a big problem at Wolfsegg; year in, year out, they sat on the buildings in their hundreds and ruined them with their droppings. I have always detested pigeons. Looking up at the pigeons on the windowsills, I told Caecilia that I had a good mind to poison them, as these filthy creatures were ruining the buildings, and moreover there was hardly anything I found as unpleasant as their cooing. Even as a child I had hated the cooing of pigeons. The pigeon problem had been with us for centuries and never been solved; it had been discussed at length and the pigeons had constantly been cursed, but no solution had been found. [i]I've always hated pigeons[/i], I told Caecilia, and started to count them. On one windowsill there were thirteen sitting close together in their own filth. The maids ought at least to clean the droppings off the windowsills, I told Caecilia, amazed that they had not been removed before the wedding. Everything else had been cleaned, but not the windowsills. This had not struck me a week earlier. Caecilia did not respond to my remarks about the pigeons. The gardeners had let some tramps spend the night in the Children's Villa, she said after a long pause, during which I began to wonder whether I had given Gambetti the right books, whether it would not have been a good idea to give him Fontane's [i]Effi Briest[/i] as well.””

— Thomas Bernhard