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Late one evening, leaning out of my window to watch the pretty girls and Gaelic drunks stroll by, I saw a large pigeon sitting on the window ledge of the apartment next to mine. It looked at me and blinked, seeming a bit helpless. One of its wings was trembling and I immediately assumed it was injured.

I decided that I'd wait until morning, and if it was still there I'd get some bread and feed the poor creature, but when I checked at breakfast I was pleased to see it was gone.

Later that evening, to my surprise, I spotted it there again, on the windowsill. Whether it was a symptom of being on my own for nearly a month, I don't know, but I felt a sudden sense of kinship for the thing; I even began speaking to it, you know, greeting it (at first I said "Hello" before realising that it must surely only understand "Bonjour").

And this was when things took a bad turn. For, the following morning (very early), I was woken from a deep sleep by a wildly penetrative cooing sound outside my window. I got up and flung the curtain back and the pigeon was there, pacing up and down as if it wanted to come in. It turned to look right at me and, in sleepy annoyance, I threw open my window and the clingy thing flew off hurriedly.

This continued for a couple more days, the last of which I noticed the way it paced along the windowsill had changed. No longer was it dainty or innocent, but cocky and authoritative; I became convinced that this pigeon was sentient, fully aware of the distress it was causing me despite my late-night pleading (in broken French) for it to leave me alone.

Like the character Jonathan Noel in Patrick Süskind's book The Pigeon, my sanity was being endangered by one of these birds. And Noel even lived in a tiny apartment in Paris, like me.

I went onto the Internet to seek help. I Googled everything imaginable from 'pigeon threatening to take over my life' and 'how to scare away an arrogant pigeon' to 'how intelligent are pigeons?' and 'what does it mean when a pigeon nods at you?'

Eventually I found a forum that had been started by some desperate girl from Missouri in the US. A swallow was waking her up early by pecking at her window. "Help!" she wrote "This bird is ruining my life!" Someone replied and suggested she find a photograph of an owl's face or draw one and stick it on her window, this should frighten the bird off. Overwhelmed with relief, I rushed back to my flat and drew an accurate reproduction of an owl's face, cut it out in the shape of an owl's head, and stuck the thing on a tall plastic bottle filled with water. "Ha-ha! This'll show him!" I said as I put the thing out on the windowsill and went to bed.

The following morning, however, I was awoken to an even more furious cooing. I sprang out of bed and when I drew the curtain back, I saw, to my horror, that my tormentor and several of his cadres were attempting to make friends with my fake owl.

Appalled, I opened the window and shouted, shouted something primal and deeply incoherent, and they all sprang off. As they did this, I am certain I heard one of them laughing. Later that day, I was walking along a street just near my flat and was pooped on from above; a well-aimed turd right on my head. I know it was the pigeon. I know it.

It is evening now as I write this and (I have just checked) he is there again, sitting silently on the windowsill opposite. He looks at me as if he doesn't know who I am, or what he's doing to me. Tomorrow will be different though - he'll be back again, severing my dreams with his warbled song and blinking at me with those unfeeling eyes.