This… is amazing.

I had NO idea! Great ending!

Ha!!

Awesome ending!!

Like also that he lost an arm and eye part. I applaud you, sir!

Oh my goodness, the last sentence almost killed me! Great job setting that up.
My only critique is about the 4th paragraph. It just seems a bit awkward with all the sentence fragments. (If you did that on purpose, then just ignore me.) :)

Had it at the third paragraph. I always enjoy stories that give life to gargoyles.

Cute twist to the ending, and fitting or appropriately feeling personification of how a statue might feel. I didn’t like the sentence structure, lots of incomplete sentences and oddly placed commas through most of it that I found distracting.

Laugh-out-loud ending. Fabulous set-up. Very well done.

Ha. Did not see that coming.

After I read the ending, I had to reread the story, so I could see everything from the poor pigeon toilet himself. :) Great stuff here.

After I read the ending, I had to reread the story, so I could see everything from the poor pigeon toilet himself. :) Great stuff here.

I didn’t see the ending coming, really really good!

Nice twist at the end! I didn’t see it coming. I wonder if the story would read better if the first sentence matched the style of the rest, with “He would wake up, …”

This was great. I’ve thought about the poor statues before but that wasn’t where I thought this story was going I was thinking more like a hermit. A pleasant surprise.

Nice set-up. Great punch line. The sentence structure could use a little work, but still well-done and funny.

You, sir… just, you… That was funny, a great twist. I was thinking it wouldn’t be something normal. I started thinking wasps, then tax collectors, then wasps again, then smoke, then those damned wasps, then… HE’S A STATUE!

Very well done, didn’t see it coming.

Very well executed!

My one recommendation for revision – this part:
“He couldn’t do anything about it, they came every day.
There was nothing he could do about it, he hated them, wanted to kill them,”
…feels repetitive to me.
Perhaps there would be another way to express and stress our hero’s inability to act without such similarity to the preceding line?

Like everyone else, I didn’t see the ending coming either. Excellent job on the deception. Also a good depiction of the filthy, flying rats that infest our cities.

I could definitely tell this was a punch line story, and it worked out very well. I might agree about RoseTone’s line “hated them, wanted to kill them, etc. etc.” in that it feels a little like overkill. But yeah, overall worked nicely, in that way that some short stories have where you read it again as soon as you’re finished. That reminds me of an excellent example in Ursula K. Le Guin (takes like 10 minutes to read, worth it):

http://tinyurl.com/9mytcaq

Yup that sure was a twist of an ending, and a hilarious one. Poor chap. Rather reminds me of Treebeard from Lord of the Rings discussing the consistency of squirrel droppings.

I have no objection to the ‘hating them, killing them etc’ paragraph. It strengthened the character of the statue for me and emphasises the fact that he is a soldier, connected the figure he was based on. I do rather like pigeons though =(

The losing the eye and arm part made me think of Napoleon.

Anyway… Cheers for entering the challenge, and making me laugh at 4am. That’s quite an achievement.