Pigeon

I have lived in my urban neighborhood since June of last year. Any move requires adjustments. I have come to like my neighborhood a great deal. The civic association is active. There are many conveniences. The harbor is close by. I like being able to walk to the shoreline.

 

The neighborhood is truly urban and densely populated. Many triple-deckers stand right up to the sidewalks. There are also many graceful homes from earlier in the 19th century. The whole area was once a commercial pear orchard, owned and operated by an old Boston farming family. The historical society is just down the street in a house which belonged to the orchard owners. My zip code was ranked among the most diverse zip codes in the U.S. recently by a national business journal.

 

Sounds good, right?

 

Yesterday afternoon I found a large pigeon cooing on the window sill inside my basement. It was a large, healthy pigeon. Perhaps it was a carrier pigeon. I didn't take much time to get acquainted. I quickly ejected it from the basement through the apparently unlatched basement window from which it had entered with the aid of a human. Somehow, the window had been left unlatched at some point.

 

The window is on my driveway, close to the entry by the sidewalk. Previously, someone had left a bag of cat food in small cans by the same window. An offering for K.D. and Francine, our two old cats, I assumed. None of our friends claimed this good deed. Perhaps the random act of kindness of a stranger/neighbor. Perhaps. I decided to throw the cat food away at the time.

 

Peter recalls hearing a sliding and thudding sound the other night, while I was away at a civic association meeting. He had thought at the time that I had returned home through the sliding door in our kitchen. I hadn't. It was likely he had heard the opening and closing of the sliding basement window by the pigeon-planting phantom. If he had done a more thorough search of the house, he may have found our feathered visitor sooner. Unfortunately, our feathered visitor had to fast from food and water overnight. The upside for me is that I had less pigeon poop to clean up yesterday after I evicted it.

 

I have secured the basement windows. I have a deeper understanding of all the fences and caging of basement windows in the neighborhood. No real harm was done to us or the house. The pigeon was kidnapped and confined against its will, but our basement was warmer than the winter night outside. Perhaps it enjoyed the respite.

 

Living in the city is always something of an adventure. This is certainly a more bizarre turn than others I have encountered in new neighborhoods, but, on one level, it is to be expected. Statistics would verify that there is a certain percentage of irrational people within my square mile of city. More statistics would verify that some of those irrational people are animal lovers. In fact, there is a good statistical chance that at least one of those irrational people raises pigeons and enjoys spreading them around.

 

I remain skeptical about the whole affair. I choose to see it as a dysfunctional act of reaching out in an albeit antisocial way. I have no evidence as yet to interpret it as hostile or aimed at me personally, since I do not know anyone who likes handling pigeons in any way. I am thankful that the trespasser deposited a pigeon, as opposed to a number of more noxious species. Life brings these tests of my humanist practice. It is the nature of things. The net result is a deep appreciation of my own practice when these tests arise.