The Wildlife

In the concrete jungle, it all starts out innocently enough: especially if you live in a high-rise. It was a blustery Tuesday morning, when two pigeons, named Cody and Megan, were house hunting on the balcony of my apartment. As you’d expect, they put in an offer. Beyond the holiday turkey or roast chicken here and there, I wasn’t fond of birds. When Cody and Megan appeared, I shooed them away, closed the balcony door and left for work. When I came home, I was in for a surprise. Cody was dancing on the railing and Megan was huddled in a shabby nest. Megan had laid some eggs. I wanted the birds to leave. I had no idea how difficult this would be. It was war. So off to war I went. Credits The Wildlife was written and produced by Peter McHugh and Clive Desmond for Pod Planet, a podcast that is so damn good. Here is a logo, which is also a fancy link: Additional Credits: Lisa Dalbello as City Animal Control Lady, Carter Hayden as Carlo the Civil Servant and Ali Rojas. Producer Biographies Pod Planet is written and produced by chronic multi-media experimenters, Peter McHugh and Clive Desmond. It’s the first podcast created by the international team, both of whom have worked across a wide variety of media formats. Clive Desmond, who has lived in Toronto and New York, also serves as the narrator for Pod Planet. He has produced audio books for Harper Collins Digital, including Bruce McCall’s “Thin Ice”, and the best-selling “Pinkerton Files” by author Bruce Luchuk. He’s also written and produced numerous syndicated radio documentaries on popular music and is a presently an on-air contributor to Canada’s top-rated talk/news radio show on CFRB in Toronto. Peter McHugh, having lived and worked in Chicago, Toronto, Amsterdam, Los Angeles and, now, Minneapolis, has been acclaimed in a wide variety of media formats, as well. Along the way, he’s produced an RIAA-certified, multi-platinum boxed set for Eric Clapton, that also yielded a Grammy-finalist song. Sadly, the song did not win. Other projects he’s worked on are display in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Le Musée de la Publicité at the Louvre in Paris (France, not Texas.) He also created the social media-driven, public activism effort, “Book Burning Party”. As a result, the closing of an award-winning library was saved from the clutches of anti-tax activists. The work drew international media acclaim, and was nationally recognized by the American Library Association.