Featherbrained

"With all the pigeons in the city in such a small amount of space, I never have contemplated the idea of one actually making contact with me." -- a friend of mine

Not many people know this about me, but I have a crazy talent for ornithology. Though my skills have probably diminished from lack of use, I was once able to identify 160 species of northeastern birds by sight and 70 by sound.

The strangest thing about this incredibly weird skill of mine is the fact that I live in New York City, a place completely devoid of any form of natural wildlife. My metropolis is almost exclusively overrun by a few species of finches, some sparrows, ubiquitous European starlings, an urban hawk or three, and, of course, millions of rock doves.


This is a rock dove. Scientific name Columba livia. Alias feral pigeon or flying rat. They are everywhere in New York City -- in our skies and our trees, under our feet and our air conditioners. But, like tourists and garbage and tall buildings, the average New Yorker barely recognizes their existence. As my friend so memorably stated in the quote immortalized above, we can go years on end without a single pigeon encounter.

Of course, I'm not so lucky. My love affair with these birds began at the ripe old age of five, when one of them shat on me while I was on my way to Kindergarten. And oddly enough, an unfortunate pigeon experience has heralded every new phase of my life ever since.

During my first year of high school, as I sat in a long-since-closed ice cream parlor in Queens with a few of my new friends, a pigeon flew into the shop, smashed into the plate-glass window above my head, knocked itself momentarily unconscious, and landed in my hair. To make matters worse, it got stuck in my rather wild curls when it revived and flapped around for a few moments before finding its way to the door.

Four years later, I began my education at the urban arm of the Ivy League and moved onto a campus full of pigeons with absolutely no fear of humans. They were constantly around my head, in my way, underfoot. I found myself swerving around campus to avoid them, which I thought was utterly ridiculous. One day, as a pigeon moseyed along in front of me as I tried to get to chemistry lecture, I began to wonder if the natural survival instinct ceased to exist in these birds. I pointed my foot, took aim, and gave the damned thing an experimental kick. Feathers scattered, it squawked and flew away. A hippie-looking girl crossing my path stopped and stared at me in abject horror. "Ohmygawd," she yelled, "animal cruelty!" I shrugged, told her the pigeon deserved it, and continued to class.

Four years later, I moved into the workforce and found myself on the upper east side. Yesterday, I got dressed up for work -- short pleated black skirt, black blouse, nude heels that make my legs look ten miles long -- and took a walk down First Avenue during my lunch break. I turned my head to check the traffic, faced forwards again... and spotted a pigeon about to collide, in-flight, with my chest. I raised my arms. It smacked into those instead, ricocheted back a foot, continued flying. I ran back to clinic as fast as my pretty heels could carry me and disinfected the upper half of my body with the same soap the MDs use to scrub into surgery.

Of course, this all leads me to wonder what's next. Watch the pigeons outnumber the guests on my wedding day.