Watching the pigeons eating leftover crusts in the park, it’s hard to imagine how much damage those innocent-looking creatures can cause. Since I rent out buildings to businesses and other offices, I have come to see how entire days, hours and hours of my time, can be taken up by those birds.
It began when pigeons infiltrated one of the buildings I rent out. They got into the building through all sorts of openings, bringing with them their mess, noise, and generally annoying presence. I kept getting complaints from the tenants and having to drop everything in order to run over and do what I could to get rid of them. A few such ordeals were enough to show me that I needed to bring in professionals.
I found a company that specialized in getting rid of pigeons and asked them to come down. Their workers arrived, fixed netting over the windows, the holes and the cracks, and then added pointy metal rods along with several other gimmicks meant to keep the creatures away. They charged me a huge sum of money, promising me that the ordeal was behind me. From that day onward, they said, there was no way a single pigeon could enter the premises.
For a while it seemed their work had indeed done the trick, but afterward, the telltale signs of pigeons on the premises were back. Apparently, the birds had been patrolling the structure, looking for some cracks the workers hadn’t closed up, and they’d found them. Once again, there was noise and mess and a barrage of complaints from my tenants.
Since I live and work on the other end of town, every time I got an SOS call to come over, I basically missed a full day's work. It was impossible.
I decided to bring in another professional. On the phone, he named his price, which was much higher than that of his predecessor. Once he'd seen the building, he mocked the work done by his competition. "I'll give you real work that will hold up," he gloated, and then doubled the price he'd given me on the phone.
Warning lights went off in my head. This man was obviously greedy for money, and lots of it. And who said his work would accomplish what the work of the previous company had failed to do? I given him I would think it over, and I left it at that.
And I really did think it over. For the first time in the two years that I'd been dealing with the pigeon saga, I thought about why it was happening to me. Why was Hashem sending this challenge my way? Once I put Hashem into the picture, I realized something significant. I hadn't davened about this at all! I hadn't turned to Hashem to ask for His help. He was the One Who had sent the pigeons, and He was the only One Who could get rid of them for me.
The next morning during Shacharis, I asked Hashem to help me restore peace and quiet to the building and to my tenants. I asked him to give me a good idea that would also spare me the astronomical sums the pigeons were costing me.
When I finished davening, it entered my mind that I should really call back the original company that promised to get rid of the pigeons. The boss answered immediately, and when he heard what happened, he said, "We'll be right over."
He arrived with several workers, and they found a number of holes and cracks that weren't properly sealed. They closed them up and charged me nothing. They took responsibility for the job they'd done.
It's clear as day to me that the power of tefillah made this happen. Without tefillah, even the second company's work wouldn't have helped.
Baruch Hashem, the pigeons haven't returned since then, but the message remains with me: Hashem is waiting for me to talk to Him and ask Him for help.