Hello, and welcome to Fledgling Enterprises’ customer support page, your home for homing pigeon troubleshooting. We have received a number of complaints about using the word “troubleshooting” since it has the word “shooting” in it, and that’s apparently traumatized a sizable portion of our customers. One of our staff members thought we should issue a trigger warning for that term, so we fired him.
While we understand that some of our customers are worried about their pigeons being shot, we want to assure everyone that “troubleshooting” does not mean we encourage people to murder troublesome pigeons. We want to assure our customers that we’ve been working with law enforcement to apprehend the self-proclaimed “Pigeon Punisher”.
Before we get to our FAQ section, we’d like to take a moment to apologize for our failed Homing Piranha line. You’ve probably heard about some of the more gruesome injuries as well as Jenny, the unfortunate cow, and we can honestly say that the extent of the injuries has been grossly exaggerated (except for the cow; that was a bit rough). However, because we are a company with principles, we’ve volunteered to eat the cost of the victims’ medical bills, and that has nothing to do with any impending lawsuits, of which there are definitely not several.
Please read the following before submitting a question, as we have posted responses to the most common issues in order to make your website experience fly right along.
- Stock Alert: Our Passenger Pigeons are completely out of stock, and we will not be getting replacements. According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, “extinct” means that you will never see them again in your lifetime. For our more dedicated customers, we suggest waiting several million years for another batch to evolve. If interested, please visit our cryogenic freezing webpage.
- Weight Issues: Please read the instruction manuals before affixing a message to a pigeon’s foot. Several people have been complaining about pigeon hernias, but we will not provide you with repairs or replacements if you insist on making one pigeon carry a bowling ball.
- Programming Errors: As you may know, we sell quite a bit of our pigeons to the military, and no one respects them more than we do. Seriously. No one even comes close. And anyone who says otherwise is probably a North Korean spy. But General Dawson, whom you may know from his rather harsh press conference about us (he described us as “literally the devil”), has been a bit upset with us. For those of you who don’t know, his homing pigeon got physically attracted to an enemy pigeon, and all the reports indicate that the two mated, the general’s pigeon exposing some fairly sensitive information. Because we don’t want to lose any future military contracts, we’ve taken the matter very seriously. After a very thorough two minute meeting, we decided the best way to manage the problem was root out potential offending pigeons and execute them (and please refrain from calling this tactic “troubleshooting”).
- Lost Pigeons: We’ve received many reports of this nature, and our team has finally determined one of the main causes. It is not, repeat, is not caused by faulty pigeons, but by a rather aggressive bird called the Peregrine Falcon. Some in the media have been spreading rumors about us conscribing our employees to kill those endangered birds of prey. This is patently false. We also give you our wholehearted promise that we definitely have not hired mercenaries to kill them. And there is no paper trail to indicate as much, so everyone who’s been arrested is only trying to put us out of business because they’re jealous of our business model. And the fact that Peregrine Falcons are now extinct in Pennsylvania is pure coincidence, so please stop calling animal rights groups; they clog up our phone lines (and don’t call us hypocrites for using phones).
- Restart Warning: Our manuals specifically state to NOT twist the pigeon’s neck in a complete circle should you start having operational issues. Twisting the neck will NOT do a factory reset; it will make them ex-pigeons. Our manuals clearly state that you can only turn their heads 359 degrees. To execute a proper restart, gently grasp the pigeon’s head between your thumb and forefinger, then tab the skull very gently with a sledgehammer. Forty or fifty repetitions of that will restart your pigeon and won’t damage the bird’s skull in any way. If the skull is damaged, it’s your fault for messing it up.
We at Fledgling Enterprises don’t want to focus on just the negative, so we have a few press releases that we think will really kickstart the new financial quarter.
- Special Offer!: Sign up for a two year plan and receive a special Kevlar vest for your pigeon. Don’t be worried about the vest weighing the pigeon down; we’ve used the highest quality bird steroids to make sure our pigeons are not only the fastest, but the strongest, even with the vest. Side effects of the steroids include but are not limited to your pigeon being awesome.
- New Q6 Pigeon Model: We’re proud to unveil our new Samsung Carrier Pigeon Q6. Because gene tampering isn’t illegal yet, our scientists have managed to merge pigeon DNA with Peregrine Falcon DNA, so not only have we contributed to keeping your pigeons safer, but they can kill rival carrier pigeons. And it helps us feel less guilty about all the dead falcons in Pennsylvania (still not our fault).
Photo by Rob Potter on Unsplash
Follow me in a completely non-creepy way:
Oh PLEASE may I get an application to work at Fledgling Enterprise! Sounds like everything I am missing in life. I want to work in the security department ( I have experience ) because it seems that you’ll need security there…
Just when I think I have you figured out, you head in another direction!
Another good one!
There have been more than a few security leaks there. I think the problem is the batch of stool pigeons we got in last week.