Monday 8 October 2007

So, If A Pigeon Drops An Egg Onto A Hard Surface... Is That Avian Abortion?

There are two pigeons who live on my balcony and crap all over everything.
Being too kind-hearted to let my old Greek landlord do away with them, as he once offered to in his matter-of-fact way, I have as a side effect committed myself to an ever renewable cycle of crap cleaning.

Resigned to their presence I have even named them - Vanilla Ice of the snow white feathers and Speckled Jim, the dappled bird of mystery - but I will never feed them, there's quite enough crap already.

Pigeons aren't supposed to be overburdened with brains in the first place but these two... it's a miracle they manage to fly let alone anything else.
They've tried to lay four eggs to date that I know of: two on the hard unaccommodating surface of my bar *smash smash*, one on a slanted seat *roll + smash* and one - finally - in a nest that they cobbled together under the bar *disappeared*. Either something managed to make off with the egg or - considering a suspicious scattering of white feathers recently - one of the downstairs cats waited for the fresh meal to hatch.

So stupid they can't even breed and even bogans and hillbillies manage that.
Nevertheless, for some undefinable reason, I've got a soft spot for them. The pigeons that is, not the bogans or the hillbillies.
They aren't the typical grey and petrol-on-wet-asphalt examples of their kind, the ones who immediately make you think 'rats-with-wings' or 'oil slick'.
They are smooth-feathered and healthy. In flight they are graceful.

They may be too dumb to successfully reproduce but at least they're optimistic enough to try.
And I suppose it's good that someone is having wild, abandoned sex on my balcony, even if they do crap on it afterwards.
Each to their own.

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