[Newsletter] Pigeons: fuck if I know what to feel about them.
A few weeks ago there was a streak of pigeon shit across my bedroom window that wasn’t there the day before. We live on the eighth floor of a building with thirty-five floors and an area with three such buildings and therefore several times those many windows. You could say I took it personally. It was a very precise slant of brown-green fluid, half of a symmetrical ‘X’. The artist appeared to have paused mid-piece to restock on paint.
During the bubonic plague, beaked doctors would mark the victims’ doors with a large red cross. You see where I’m going with this. I am anti-pigeon, and the pigeons know it. They have marked me out. It wasn’t always like this; pigeon sex used to fascinate me. I have on occasion played into their compulsive need for an audience during sex, and written about the spectacle in glowing terms. But man, I am tired. Have you ever seen two crows having sex? You have not, and that is because a crow is a private individual. A pigeon is not a crow. A pigeon’s business soon becomes everyone’s business.
Nowadays I do not allow pigeons to have sex near my window in peace. I run at them from a distance so they have ample time to see me come charging. The pigeons stop fluttering and go still, looking at me with the orange eye of Sauron on the side of their head. They are calling my bluff; I pick up the phone with righteous fury and grace, crashing into the window with both my hands and a guttural yell. They take off from the ledge immediately and land on the opposite ledge, making it clear they are biding their time. They do not give up, but they do grow wary.
I have always thought the aggression of certain sports where men grasp at each other half-naked, oiled and slippery and gorgeous, is indistinguishable from the eroticism of combative sex. The same applies to pigeons in reverse: their fucking is so ungainly, so uncoordinated and panicked, that it is indistinguishable from a brawl.
Sometimes I think deeper about the way human beings have so arrogantly claimed land, water, and even air – even whole columns of open sky, for real estate development! – and I begin to feel guilty. If it wasn’t my window ledge, it would’ve been the tree that was cut down to make space for my window ledge, wouldn’t it? Do pigeons really spread disease (they do) or is that propaganda (it is not)? Am I in fact racist against pigeons? Cue spiral. This is of course the exact kind of handwringing that feints at absolution and accomplishes nothing material; I am a pro at it. There was even a short phase where I became skeptical of the anti-pigeon position, exasperating my entire family by vowing to do “more research on the issue”; my mother in turn vowed to soundly bonk me on the head with a spoon.
She is anti-pigeon, like me. If pigeons overnight became part of the Indian electorate my mother and I would be unable to run for office (or extremely able to run for office, depending on how you go about the vote banking) – we are both on record saying disqualifying things. My mother has once seriously considered the purchase of a gun (she, who opted out of her Malayali fish-eating ancestry on the grounds of animal rights and proselyted my father after marriage).
Her animus against pigeons is much more strongly founded than mine. I find it difficult to read or nap in my room while a pigeon is crooning. My mother has to clean up the pigeon shit in the living room balcony, prevent them from nibbling at her plants, and make sure they don’t start nesting behind the pots. I am the fussy princess; my mother is the muddy-kneed and muscular gardener. She is up against a tough fight because pigeons have the advantage on our balcony. It is open air, for one. There are a lot of potted plants, creating dark nooks and hiding places. There is one plant that is supposed to be one of those hanging wall plants. We don’t have anywhere to hang it, so it stays on the ground, its luscious green carpet providing cover for guerrilla eggs. My mother has to hunt out these eggs and throw them away before they hatch. But we still find odd bits of yarn and straw behind the pots. These pigeons grow wary, but they do not give up.
Here’s a true story. In the third week of January, and a week after a pigeon shat a warning symbol on my window, a baby pigeon crash-landed into the balcony. The tiny thing was keening pitifully. I had to take breakfast in my room, I couldn’t bear to listen to it attempting and failing to fly. Call a vet, I said, hysterical. We are not calling a vet, my mother hissed. My sister left for school, my father left for work, and since I was basically comatose, my mother had to deal with the issue. The first problem was that she couldn’t leave the balcony for too long – a large male pigeon would try doing unspeakable things with the baby pigeon if she wasn’t there to shoo it away. THESE MEN! I heard my mother call in fury from behind my bedroom door. I also heard a lot of things being moved around; later I would learn this was my mother arranging for a bucket and newspaper, and heaving aside pots. She put the bucket in front of the baby pigeon. Literally backed against the wall, it went inside. Then my mother yelled for me. I came running with no idea of what had happened, fists clenched and determined to be brave. Turned out my mother had taken care of all that and just needed someone to pass her the newspaper.
I caught one glimpse of the baby pigeon before the Times of India went over the bucket. It looked small and dark, shadowed by the bucket walls. It didn’t move, it didn’t make a sound. I opened the door for my mother and she went down the lift to the garden, and deposited the baby pigeon in the safety behind some large bushes, where it rolled out and stood upright. A guard thought she was dumping trash. I waited for my mother at the door with one hand on the jamb, heart in my throat, like a soldier’s wife.
When I asked her later how she felt, she snorted. Nothing, she said. What do you mean? I asked. Why should I feel anything about it? she countered. But didn’t the cries distress you? I pressed. Of course, my mother said. I didn’t like the crying one bit. I wanted it to stop. As she cleaned the balcony she noted that the baby pigeon had shat itself all over the tiles in fear.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to make of this radically stressful experience. I feel differently about pigeons in some ways now. I don’t feel that enthusiastic about running at them all the time anymore, I just want to put up some netting and be done with it. I still do not want them having sex on my window ledge. I still find them dumb. But I also hope the dumb baby pigeon managed to fly again. Maybe it’s something about babies; any baby of any living thing can make you feel funny. Or maybe it’s the pigeon shit after all; shitting oneself in fear is a relatable act.
What do I really, truly, deeply feel about pigeons? Fuck if I know for certain. We finally got my bedroom window cleaned last week. I’ll wait on some signs.