Compassionate Parisian Woman Removes Painfully Entangling String and Hair From the Toes of Pigeons

Each day psychologist Catherine Hervais walks from her home to a square near Centre Pompidou in Paris with birdseed in hand to greet the pigeons on the street so they will allow her to treat each one of them for “stringfoot”, a painful condition in which a pigeon’s toes or foot has become entangled in foreign matter, such string, floss, or hair. The birds not only let Hervais examine them, but stick around as if to show appreciation

(translated) Every day I treat the feet of some injured pigeons. Some arrive with wires wrapped around their toes, sometimes for weeks. They can no longer walk normally, and they end up laying on their bellies, exhausted. They cannot tell what they live, but their bodies speak.

Hervais, who loves all animals, said that she wouldn’t be able to look at herself in the mirror if she didn’t do something.

(translated) Every day I treat the pigeons’ feet in the Pompidou Centre Square in Paris because in the city they end up losing their fingers due to the threads that compress the root of them. … I don’t like pigeons more than other animals, but since these are in front of me, when I go outside, I won’t be able to look at myself in the mirror if I didn’t help them.