So Wimbledon has come under fire lately, and it’s not for letting Maria Sharapova dress like a ball-boy. It turns out the hawks that keep pigeons from watching the matches without paying swooping down and interrupting the matches haven’t been doing their job well enough so the Brits did what every good American does when they have a problem they can’t solve—shoot the MF’ers.

The tournament employs two hawks to scare away pigeons who had become a pest swooping down on Centre Court and distracting players in the middle of tense matches. But the hawks failed to keep the pigeons away from the players’ lawn and the open-air media restaurant so marksmen were called in.

“The hawks are our first line of deterrent, and by and large they do the job,” Wimbledon spokesman Johnny Perkins said. “But unfortunately there were one or two areas where the hawks didn’t deter the pigeons, so it was deemed necessary to take a harder approach.”

Yeah, calling guns a “harder approach” is like calling Gitmo a detention center—a pretty extreme classification. Maybe the Wimbledon people should have just hired Tripp Isenhour for their pigeon-killing needs. Although, is being bludgeoned by a golf ball any more humane than being shot?

Wimbledon under fire for pigeon cull [Reuters]
Image [Flickr]