Like a Southern plantation gradually being overtaken by kudzu, the elevated station is under a relentless assault from pigeons, whose profuse droppings give the station the look of one that has been abandoned - or one that should be.

The Transit Authority has put up some netting, but the pigeons always find a way back to their favorite roosting spots. This battle has been lost.

"I don't blame the bird," said Sal Santamaria, a pigeon-control expert who has spent the last decade in a ceaseless, nonviolent struggle against New York's premier pest (yes, pest). Working for an extermination company called Bug Doctor, Santamaria travels the city in a termite-covered VW Beetle, evicting pigeons like a city marshal evicting a rent scofflaw.

"The pigeon is a human parasite," said Santamaria, who is trying to convince the TA to hire him. "They spread disease. They start fires. They ruin everything."

Case in point: that new park being built under the West Side Highway. For months, pigeons roosting under the elevated roadway turned three brand-new basketball courts into their own private toilets. No matter how frequently the Parks Department sent high-pressure water trucks, the courts were covered with feces.

For a measly $85,000, Santamaria's company ended the problem with a system of nets and spikes. That's no small feat. Evicting pigeons from a favorite spot, Santamaria said, "is like me coming into your house and dragging you out, kicking and screaming. You'll do anything to get back in."

Yet the basketball courts remain spotless today, just in time for spring.

"Now people will actually use those courts," said Michael Bradley, executive director of the Riverside South Planning Corp., which is building the new park with the city. "People were really turned off by the droppings."

For most of us, pigeon control is a laughing matter. Tom Lehrer's song "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" once counseled, "It's not against any religion/To want to dispose of a pigeon," while San Francisco writer Hank Hyena suggested the city open KFC-like " 'Frisco Fried Pigeon" franchises that serve "shish ke-pigeon."

Santamaria appreciates the humor, but he does not kill pigeons. (He doesn't even eat squab.)

In his 23 years in the extermination business, he's certainly killed his share of rats and cockroaches - they're Nos. 2 and 3 on his list of the worst city pests - but pigeons are practically a protected species in New York, thanks to government regulation and plenty of people who think it's fun to feed the bothersome birds.

"We can't even use Avitrol [a popular bird pesticide] anymore," Santamaria complained. "That's like going into a war without a gun."

Can Santamaria's one-man war on pigeons be won? Well, the pigeon can be controlled, but New York will always have a problem.

"I've been all over the country," Santamaria said, reflecting on the Sisyphean nature of his work, "but New York City sets the standard for vermin."

Well, at least we're No. 1.

gersh.kuntzman@verizon.net