🐦 TREE 160: How to pigeon 5 – be a pest
Domestic pigeons have, inevitably, escaped, and bred – and found that the high ledges of the cities were just as good for them as cliffs: church steeples and towers, public offices, museums, railway stations, factories, warehouses, gabled houses, turrets, cupolas, angled rain pipes, ventilators, airbrick spaces, eaves, lofts and attics. They learned to use a city’s food resources as well: bread, biscuits, peanuts, banana, apple peel, potato, cheese, fish, meat, fat, chocolate, ice-cream. And so they prospered and spread, and did so in a multitude of forms: some like the ancestral rock doves, others in all manner of fancy colours, some sleek and beautiful, others wacky and clownish. Sometimes, these outlandish forms breed back to the pure rock dove form.
The reward for all of this is to be called a pest. The word “pest” means any living thing that is inconvenient to humans, as if only one species had a right to this planet, and all the rest were here on sufferance. I don’t wish to pursue this argument to the logical extreme, but I find feral pigeons cheering and diverting members of the community, and worth tolerating a few smelly places for. A few dibbles of whitewash along a building indicate life to me, not a dreadful evidence of shame and neglect.
Most of the information you find about feral pigeons is about how to kill them. “Out of control” is the big scary line you keep running across - as if it was essential for all untamed animals to be under human control. I am not advocating the spreading of disease by any means, but I don’t subscribe to the universal hate-the-pigeon campaign. Pigeons are clever; they come in different colours and forms; they are messy; they are noisy; and they are very, very determined to survive. Just like humans, really. No wonder we hate them.
—Simon Barnes, A Bad Birdwatcher’s Companion
I couldn’t think of a better way to finish up How to Pigeon week. To me, at our absolute best, at our absolute most us we can be, we are pigeons. Don’t be afraid of your differences, don’t be afraid of your fancy-ness, your cheekiness, your rogue-ness. If you are wacky and clownish inside then – flipping heck, mun! – be wacky and clownish outside as well.
And don’t be afraid of being pests because it is the pests in society that survive.
It is the pests in society who make things better for others.
It is the pests in society who change society for the better.
Martin Luther King, Emmeline Pankhurst, Nelson Mandela, Aneurin Bevan, Marie Curie, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Greta Thunberg – pests!
And you! When you have to fight to get your kids the support they need in school.
And you! When you stand up to the person who sold you a dodgy car.
And you! When you stand up to prejudice and protest injustice.
You beautiful pests, you!
Happy weekend xx
Christine
Thank you, Christine, for this marvellous week of pigeonism! You can keep up with Christine’s fantastic photos and knitting and other adventures on Instagram.
Next week, I’m making a couple little changes to TREE. They will happen Thursday and Friday.
Speaking of changes: hands up if you noticed an ever so slight toning down of the TREE green this week.
—Jeff
Instead of listening to this song, Christine spent Thursday evening dealing with our daughter’s1 very large meltdown. Garbage will have to speak for themselves:
The Memory of TREE playlist – every song from every email:
She has FASD and is adopted. It’s a potent and explosive mix.