They've been shot and poisoned and threatened with large, plastic owls.

Feral pigeons, however, remain among the most plentiful of wildlife in downtown Medford. And the birds are not all that's plentiful.

"Poop here, poop there, poop everywhere," said Scott Henselman, a Medford real estate agent who manages more than a dozen downtown office buildings. "You go up on a roof and you'll see pigeon poop everywhere."

And there lies the problem: Pigeons and their messes irritate building owners and real estate agents as well as pedestrians, motorists and city workers. The expense of cleaning up the mess runs into thousands of dollars annually.

For years, the city and building owners tried all sorts of ways to shoo pigeons. Now, Medford seems to have come to the realization that only one thing can be done.

"For many, many years, the city's position has just been to go in and clean up after them," said Wayne Pace of the city's Public Works Department.

One of the latest victims in the subtle struggle between man and bird is Stan Hoffman. The owner of Antique Time on Bartlett Street in Medford came to work late on the night of Aug. 7 to find an eighth of an inch of rainwater covering the shop's floor.

The next day, Hoffman climbed on the roof to find the culprit: 3 inches of pigeon poop clogged the gutters, and water from recent storms formed a puddle on his roof that leaked into the building.

Hoffman used a stick to punch holes through the bird feces.

"It was a stinky, awful mess," Hoffman said. "It was the worst swamp you could think of."

Shari Staley also knows about pigeons. She's the office manager at ERA Prestige Homes on Sixth Street in downtown Medford. Pigeons find the building's brickwork perfect for nesting.

"Unfortunately they're right above our door," Staley said. `I don't think I need to say anymore, do I?"

Henselman said that he has people clean the pigeon waste off of the roofs, ledges and awnings of his buildings about twice a year.

"In my 18 years of handling property in Medford, we've had 18 years of pigeon poop," Henselman said.

Pigeons don't even have to leave droppings to make life difficult. The birds worm their way into air conditioning and heating units of buildings, Henselman said.

"Sometimes a pigeon will die in there and it can really stink up a building when that system is turned on," Henselman said.

The pigeons also run afoul of city crews, mainly under Interstate 5 where it crosses above the city and where pigeons perch by the hundreds. The Medford public works department has to clean the sidewalks under these areas.

"In a relatively short period of time when they're actively nesting and roosting, it will get an inch -- sometimes two inches -- deep," Pace, of the public works department, said.

He said it takes two people with a high-pressure hose and a street sweeper six to eight hours to clean the sidewalk and roadway underneath each crossing.

For a city with a $90 million budget, the cost of cleaning is nominal. Pace said it runs his department about $400 for labor and equipment each time. Each section gets cleaned about a half dozen times a year, for an cost of around $7,200.

The Bear Creek Greenway, the paved path that runs through most of Jackson County, also runs for a stretch under the freeway.

Greg Jones, Medford parks and recreation director, said pigeons perch under the freeway and drop their payloads on the path. When it rains, the waste makes the path slick for walkers and bicyclists. Volunteers and workers clear out the path almost weekly.

The Medford School District also suffers pigeon indignities at Spiegelberg Stadium at South Medford High School.

During every football season, custodians spend about 200 hours cleaning or repainting the stands where the birds leave their marks, said Sam Digati, manager of facilities and grounds for the district.

"You can only clean it so much before you ruin the paint," Digati said.

Of course, not everyone holds an anti-pigeon prejudice. Some people feed the birds under the freeway near Hawthorne Park almost daily. And Pat Ditch, who lives in Central Point and raises pigeons, said pigeons have gotten a lot of bad publicity.

"It's just like any other thing," Ditch said. "Raccoons are neat unless they're in your garbage every night. Pigeons are wonderful if they're not messing down your walls."

Over the years, building owners and city workers have tried all sorts of ways to get rid of pigeons and their messes.

People used to poison the birds, Henselman said, which didn't go over well with people who enjoy them.

"You get dead pigeons flopping around on sidewalks," Henselman said. "And people don't like to see dead pigeons flopping on sidewalks, so we don't do that anymore."

Building owners used to catch the birds on their rooftops and give them to dog trainers. The dog trainers would shoot the birds and teach dogs to retrieve the carcasses, Henselman said.

Henselman also referred to an annual "Pigeon Day" in Medford decades ago, where farmers and hunters would come to the city with rifles to solve the pigeon menace; the Southern Oregon Historical Society has no record of such an activity.

More than a year ago, at the ERA Prestige building, workers stuck up a plastic owl to scare the birds away. It didn't work.

"We discovered that when they started landing on its head a couple of days after we put it up," said Michelle Gurzi, transaction coordinator at the business.

The city and school district are sensitive to bird lovers and have not tried killing or injuring the birds in the recent past, said Pace and Digati. But they have looked at shooing the birds away.

Under the I-5 viaduct, the city has investigated putting up netting or screening, and also considered putting up devices that emit the sounds of predatory birds.

But the city hasn't tried these methods, Pace said, because they've failed elsewhere.

Jones said the city used to put up a sticky, gel-like substance called Hot Foot on the ledges of the viaduct to make it uncomfortable for the birds to perch. It worked for a while, but the gel dried up and the birds went back to business as usual.

Now, the city is looking at putting plastic prongs on the ledges to make them uncomfortable, Jones said.

But, for now, Medfordites have just learned to live with their birds.