Part 4: Pidgeons
I’ve been watching pidgeons lately for no particular reason. I’ve been keeping an eye on these fellas for a very long time, to be frank, since I often find them more intruiguing than the average John Doe wearing a suit and a tie, running around the city with a phenomenal briefcase with mystical content intended to raise female attraction. This is what I’ve found out so far.
City pidgeons differ from wild pidgeons.
I’ve never seen wild pidgeons, I must admit, but since we have city pidgeons there must be some hidden tribe of them somewhere, probably up in the mountains or something. And wild pidgeons will have different surroundings to adapt to. They’ll not have trashcans or unemployed housewifes, retired people or giggling kids to provide for their food. They’d have to provide for their own table, so to speak. City pidgeons, however, eat whatever they can find. Heck, I’ve even seen a couple of pidgeons trying to beat the crap out of a couple of black crows for some road-kill! Yeah.
And they’ve not only adapted to the spillings of man. They’ve adapted to man himself and become more like him. They’re pretty arrogant creatures, even though they try to assume a low, cute and featherly profile. Well, they don’t fool me. I see them for what they are. They are really cynical bastards.
I saw this little kid in the park one day, for instance, and he’d gotten an ice-cream (probably because his parents were so sick of his noise) which he evidently dropped on the side-walk. Kids do that kind of thing, as if they have a retarded physical motorization or something, I dunno but it happens all the time. So this kid did what most kids would do, namely trying to save the scraps of the ice-cream from the sidewalk.
This is where the pidgeons walked in.
Pidgeons actually walks in, they don’t hop in like your average next-door sparrow. One more reason not to trust them.
Anyway, they walked in, having observed the weakling child struggle with his ice-cream while his parents were ignoring him (probably wishing they were somewhere else), and went for the ice-cream. The kid got scared, naturally. He was of that second other half of kids that don’t molest anything they see. So he backed off and that was the end of mr. Ice-cream.
Of course the parents had to buy him a new one, or else he’d be whining about it for at least the rest of the day. And the pidgeons? Well, the cynical bastards’ plan worked out just they way they’d expected, I reckon.
Another thing is that they don’t take care of their own.
Again I must warn you about their innocent appearance. It’s all a cover-up.
One day I was on my way to work I had to stop by a convenient store to buy some cigarette paper. No problem, there’s one just two blocks down from where I live, so I trod off a happy chap thinking about the expected events of the day… when an unexpected one introduced itself.
There were around 12 pidgeons trying to fit themselves onto a windowpane which had a little opening producing some heat for them. The cold-hearted bastards tend to freeze very easily, naturally. Anyway, my attention was captured by one of the pidgeons who couldn’t get any room on the pane despite the effort laid into it. Everywhere he tried to sneak in, or stand on one foot without annoying anyone, his fellow gang-members hacked him with their beaky beaks. (I could tell they were the same gang by the gang colours. You learn those kind of things when you live in a city.) Desperately trying to get some heat, the poor bastard went from one side to another, then to the middle again, but without any luck. He was being freezed out, literally.
There you go. They’re down-to-earth ego-centric birds.
But I’m letting myself go here, sorry about that.
On the other side of this fascinating issue, we’ve got homeless people.
In my view there are two kinds of homeless people. 1) Homeless people and 2) Homeless people shooting smack
Don’t get me wrong I feel very sorry for these men and women, since I have no problem picturing myself at the age of 35 also lying in a ditch somewhere screaming obscene words to my imaginary friends, but to me it seems that homeless people shooting smack are less capable at taking care of themselves. I think it could be a safe assumption, yes. But the regular homeless people are on the other hand very resourceful. If it hadn’t been for them, this city would’ve been filled to the brim with empty beer bottles and everything that’s refundable.
What I’ve never understood is why the same resourceful people never hunt pidgeons.
In my entire life, travelling around the world and living at different places, have I never ONCE seen a homeless guy put up a net for capturing pidgeons. And of course, pidgeons might not be as great as Thanksgiving turkey (not that I’ve tried it either) but it would be better than starvation, wouldn’t you agree?
If homeless people could reduce ye multitude of pidgeons, I think we’d see a change in the pidgeon’s current pattern of cynical arrogance. They’d have to grow smarter, like every other animal on the planet (except for you and me), and they’d have to learn some skills instead of fattening themselves on top of the food chain. I’d like to see that.
Not that I mind pidgeons.. It’s not that I hate them or anything.
I do mind kids, however.. Uhm, yeah.. But anyway.. Back to work..
Well written. Good job.
Cheers:)
No problem writing good shit about pidgeons, though. Can’t see why this isn’t the big thing around the net. Pidgeons I mean..