The drug problem in Vancouver is so extreme that pigeons are making nests out of needles

Normally, those dirty, flying rat-things that we call “pigeons” make their nests out of nice things like grass, and twigs, and wool, and, I dunno, Tech Decks – whatever they can find, basically.

And because they construct their homes out of stuff they’ve salvaged, in Vancouver they’ve been making them out of hypodermic needles.

The reason for this is that Vancouver’s drug problem has got a tad out of hand. The police reported that they’d found a sink in a ‘single room occupancy’ – which is basically a cheapo hotel room in a poor neighborhood – and a resourceful sky-scrot had made a nest in it. A spiky, bum-unfriendly nest, constructed entirely out of used drug paraphernalia.

Here’s the offending abode:

I mean, it's great that the pidgies are cleaning up the mess off the streets, but it’s not the best reflection on the current state of the drug problem in Vancouver.

There’s been a huge rise in overdoses in the area, with batches of drugs contaminated with very powerful opiods like fentanyl or carfentanil, and this has led to more than 100 drug-related deaths in the city throughout 2017 so far. There were reports that in a single night in April, paramedics in the Downtown Eastside had to attend to at least 12 overdoses.

Not great. For humans or pigeons.