The Autobiography of Benjamin Abbott - Chapter 13: The Pigeons (Part One)
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Let’s talk about pigeons. The domestic pigeon was derived from the rock pigeon, which is the world’s oldest domesticated bird. Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets mention the domestication of pigeons more than 5000 years ago, as do Egyptian hieroglyphics. Research suggests that domestication of pigeons occurred as early as 10,000 years ago. Feral pigeons, also called city doves, city pigeons or street pigeons, are derived from domestic pigeons that have returned to the wild. The domestic pigeon was originally bred from the wild rock dove, which naturally inhabits sea-cliffs and mountains. Wild, domestic and feral pigeons are all the same species and will readily interbreed. Feral pigeons find the ledges of buildings to be a substitute for sea cliffs, and have become adapted to urban life, and are abundant in towns and cities throughout much of the world.
I have stolen all of the above information from Wikipedia, I hope it’s true. They also like to eat pigeons in England, or so I’m told. That I didn’t steal from Wikipedia. And they don’t only like to hang out on sea cliffs or the tops of buildings, they also like to hang out on the sidewalk in front of my favorite New York-style pizza place in Glendale, Bira’s. I suppose this lent a sense of genuineness to the experience of going to Bira’s since I would have to fight through the milling pigeons on the sidewalk like I was fighting through crowds of people on 87th Street in New York. I would wave my arms repeatedly at the pigeons trying to get them to move out of the way as I walked towards the entrance of the restaurant. But they wouldn’t disperse, they would jump a few feet backwards staying in my way, surrounding me, begging for food, shitting on everything. On everything.
There was a nice patio area set out in front of the restaurant with a few chairs and umbrella’ed tables. I would sit there eating my pizza and fighting the pigeons as they cooed and came closer, circling me, cooing some more, circling, coming closer, closing in on me like a SWAT team ready to pounce. I suppose I could have eaten inside instead of always eating on the sidewalk patio but I liked to get some sun when I was having pizza and more importantly if I gave in to the pigeons on the sidewalk where would it end, they would just keep encroaching more and more, somebody had to stand on the beaches and fight them and I was that man.
After being fired by Humphrey and after being thrown out of the office and after driving my windowless car back to my apartment building and feeling sorry for myself for two days, I went to Bira’s to grab a bite to eat and try to gain perspective on life. I of course sat out on the patio, amongst the circling pigeons as I read the free weekly looking through the jobs section in the back that contained mostly scams and employment opportunities of a dubious sounding nature.
So I was sitting alone with the pigeons (because no one else was brave enough to fight them on the patio) slowly sinking into abyss-level depression, warily guarding my half-sausage, half-mushroom pizza, having to hold the thin floppy disk slices with both hands, one on the crust (the handle of the pizza), the other propping up the weeping front, preparing to take an enormous depression curing bite when several of the circling pigeons began fluttering crazily like they were expecting an earthquake.
I stopped mid-bite, mouth open, watching the flickering blizzard of greyish-white wings when an especially plump pigeon fell in my lap dead. This is not some complicated metaphor to explain the depths of my depression. No, a pigeon fell in my lap, literally. Then another fell onto the as yet uneaten (and apparently will remain uneaten) mushroom side of my pizza. It was raining pigeons.
“Fuck, I’ve been cursed by a plague,” was my first thought as I picked up the dead pigeon from my lap. Pigeons were panicking now, flying all around me, covering me like the early morning smog covers the Los Angeles skyline, because they were being decimated by a vengeful God. Holding the dead pigeon by its feet I turned it over and looked into its dead eyes. I noticed something sticking out of its puffy chest. It looked like the back end of a bullet. I don’t have much (any) experience with guns, but I was sure I could recognize a bullet sticking out of a pigeon and this definitely looked like a bullet sticking out of a pigeon.
A third pigeon dropped from the swarm. The pigeons were now squawking in horrible agony at seeing their fellow pigeons massacred before their eyes. I quickly did some mental calculations about the probability of someone hunting pigeons on a Glendale sidewalk vs. the probability of someone hunting me (on a Glendale sidewalk) and ducked under the table.
Several slow-moving seconds passed with me under the table trying to see into the building and bushes across the street. The swirling pigeons stopped swirling and returned to their normal scavenging and begging positions on the sidewalk. They looked dazed, life had definitely not returned to normal, they had been collectively occupying that sidewalk for months, for years, and now they were being indiscriminately slaughtered for no apparent reason. It was an existential shock. A pigeon holocaust.
I was still under the table, now scanning the tops of the buildings across the street. I had brief doubts. Maybe it had been a plague of pigeons, maybe I was just being paranoid because of the way I had been fired a few days earlier. I mean, although it was certainly more likely someone was shooting at me instead of hunting urban pigeon, it was still pretty unlikely someone was shooting at me. Then I turned over the pigeon that I was still desperately grasping in my hands and saw the bullet in its chest. They weren’t hunting pigeon in the city, I was sure of it, someone was shooting at me. And it had to be Humphrey.
It’s not like I had any other enemies at the time. Okay, there was Clark, Debi’s husband, but from what I’d gathered about him from Debi, he wasn’t exactly the gun-toting type who would try to kill the person sleeping with his pregnant wife. He might try to shame me or harm me in some other passive aggressive way (like asking me to sit down with him and talk about “the situation”), but he wasn’t going to try to kill me, I’d say there’s even less than a 50% chance he’d take a swing at me.
This had to be Humphrey. I had visions of him in his office late at night, the night after he fired me, the blue light now a darkish blue, a midnight blue, all of the other lights in his office turned off because he’s about to do something sinister. He picks up his phone, no, his cell phone, and calls his fixer. Somebody who can take care of things when no one else can. Someone who can put him in contact with various lowlifes, street toughs, and deeply creased ruffians. I could see Humphrey in the darkness whispering into his phone, “I have a problem that I need your help with.” That’s how these things happen. That’s how innocent pigeons get killed. I needed to get out of there, so I could have a chance to plan. Humphrey had changed the game on me.