Treatment of post office birds sparks complaints

By Rosa Duarte

Published: May 27, 2008

Some customers are upset with a local post office and their complaints have nothing to do with mail.

After stopping at the Christiansburg post office on Arbor Drive, Josh Howard ended up taking pictures he says were pretty disturbing of birds caught in netting above the rafters in the loading dock area. “It seemed very irresponsible, very needless. It was definitely a lot of song birds basically just chirping and going crazy and trapped up in the net. When I walked over there, there was approximately between 7 and 10 birds trapped above the net, there was at least three dead ones.”
According to Victor Dubina, a spokesman with the U.S Postal Service, the netting was put up about three years ago to keep birds from building nests in the rafters. Before the net, birds were such a problem Dubina says the picnic tables where employees would hang out had to be washed down once a day. Despite putting up the net, birds still found a way in, some getting stuck.
Howard says after seeing the birds he emailed WSLS, PETA and other animal rights groups in the area. After being contacted by PETA, Dubina says the company that put up the net, Dodson Brothers, has been out to fix the problem. First, by shooing all the birds out and then securing the net back in place.
Dubina also says Dodson will be monitoring the nets once a week to make sure the problem doesn’t come up again.
Howard says he’ll be visiting the post office more often “When they said they were going to loosen the nets and allow the birds in and out, I drove by to make sure they did that, and they’ve held true to what they said they were going to do so far.”