Above, an Instagram post by John Pena, as seen on Eye on Pomona

One Pomona business owner who considered the arrival of Bird scooters on his property a scourge took matters into his own hands.

John Pena, who owns the Mission Promenade mixed-use center at Mission and Garey, wasn’t happy to see the scooters on his property, where a sign reads “No skateboards, no bikes.” He called the city and learned Bird had no permits.

(The company dropped scooters off around the city overnight Tuesday and then alerted City Hall that it would apply for permission, as my colleague Liset Marquez reported.)

I happened to be sitting by Pena at a luncheon event at the Sheraton on Thursday and he told me about the scooters. He said he had phoned Bird on Wednesday asking that the scooters be removed and the company assured him it would do so. Two hours later, he phoned again and they told him they’d already collected them. No, they hadn’t.

Pena said if the scooters weren’t gone in two hours, he’d throw them in the trash. That got no response either.

He didn’t want to damage them, so no throwing was involved. Instead, he placed the eight scooters upright in the trash enclosure and texted a photo to Bird.

“Guess what? Two hours later, they were gone,” Pena said. “They probably thought I was bluffing, but I wasn’t bluffing. And now this morning they’re gone. So they understood.”