Acknowledgement
Were it not for Goldstar’s fantastic article about champion pigeon personalities (Racing Pigeon Digest, January 15, 2021), I would have been too shy to reveal what goes on with the pigeons in my neighborhood. Thank you Goldstar.
For a few weeks I have been trying to submit a short account of what happened to Maroon Pigeon. I haven’t been able to do it, because what happened to him is still unbearably sad and because it happened against a backdrop that is still unbearably ugly.
This is a true story. The names of people and places have been changed.
Since 2010, the kind and forward thinking management of the gym I went to in a city I will call Anycity, USA, allowed me to feed the pigeons who congregated in the southwest corner of the gym’s parking lot. This got started when a family moving out of the apartment next door, gave me some birdseed. “Here,” said the wife, “You’ll do something good with this.” I put the birdseed in the closet that stored all of the things I never used and felt compelled to keep because I might use them someday. By the next morning I had forgotten about it.
Later that day, when going into the gym after work, I saw the pigeons in the southwest corner of the parking lot, standing where they had been standing since I joined the gym two years previous, on the ground, motionless and even from a distance, noticeably miserable. I didn’t know anything about pigeons then. I thought all pigeons were mangy, chubby birds with gray or black patchy feathers who would eat anything regardless of whether it was good or bad for them. It seemed to me that they didn’t mind hanging about in parking lots scrounging for human food.
After two weeks of giving these pigeons two quarts of seeds per day, I realized how wrong I had been. Instead of still standing in their spot when I came out of the gym, they were gone. It occurred to me that they had been so malnourished that they didn’t have the motivation, physical or mental, to get out of the parking lot. Plus, the transformation in their appearance was dramatic. Their eyes were bright, not dull and sad, they stood with good posture instead of hunched down. New feathers were growing in and dull feathers were becoming shiny. Their movements had changed from sluggish to quick. Most noticeably, chubby looking birds were now lean and muscular. Being out of my neighbor’s seeds, I bought more.
In 2015, after seeing a pigeon flat on his back under my car and taking him to a shelter because he had heat exhaustion, I started putting out three containers of water, instead of the two small bowls. These were big enough for the pigeons to bathe in. As word got out, the group doubled in size, to approximately eighty pigeons.
In the summer of 2019 I noticed an unusual looking pigeon emerging from underneath my car to eat the seeds that invariably fell on the pavement when I filled the containers. I took to calling him Maroon Pigeon because his feathers were several gorgeous shades of maroon. If you saw him, you might ask, “Why didn’t you call him Purple Pigeon?” That would be a fair question because if you look closely his feathers are actually a blend of maroon, dark grey and several shades of very dark purple. His plumage isn’t shimmery. I looked up pictures of maroon pigeons online and didn’t see a single pigeon who resembled him at all. His feathers have a sheen to them like what you would see coming from an opal, kind of a low-key luster. Maroon Pigeon has a flash of shimmery pink on his back at the base of his neck and incongruously, a tiny dusting of cinnamon brown on the middle of both wings. How does he look around his beak and his eyes? When I looked at the pictures of Chuck Oshaben’s Trentons in the February 1, 2021 edition of Racing Pigeon Digest I wondered if Maroon Pigeon had some Trenton in him. He has that same look to his face and his feathers are similar in color to the pigeon on page 31. Maroon Pigeon has the same purple and maroon colored feathers, but they are less shiny than Chuck’s pigeon’s feathers and are in a blend on his back and wings, with his breast being maroon.
What made me love him was his personality. He was always sunny and happy. He would look up at me with his big happy eyes, so gentle and appreciative. At all times Maroon Pigeon stayed humble, serene, cheerful and positive. Sunny, sunny, sunny. Maroon Pigeon was always sunny. After having his seeds, he didn’t hang around. He would dip his legs just enough to take off with an economy of motion and each strong flap of his wings would take him away fast. He was a unique combination of a workmanlike pigeon and an absolute showstopper of beauty. Calm and intelligent, Maroon Pigeon was the kind of pigeon you would want if you were in the trenches during World War I and you needed a pigeon to carry a message asking for a resupply of ammo or if you were an MI6 or SOE agent during World War II who needed a pigeon to carry back intelligence you had almost died getting.
This past October, Maroon Pigeon went missing for two days. Wen an emaciated or injured pigeon goes missing, I admit to becoming a nervous wreck. Sometimes they pop back, sometimes not. If a healthy pigeon goes missing, I hope it’s because he or she has moved on to a better situation or best of all, they are on a nest.
After two days Maroon Pigeon was back, but his sunny, serene, and calm demeanor had vanished. Maroon Pigeon was skittish and fearful, running frantically towards the seeds as if he had been starved. While he ate he constantly looked up and around, as if expecting something awful to happen at any second. Worst of all, he would just stop and hunch down, staring into space, as if lost in some terrible, terrible memory. His whole body would droop and stay stone still, as if he was frozen. Sadness, shame and self-hatred poured off of him and he was clearly in a lot of pain from the string wound so tightly around and around his ankle that the delicate red skin on his leg bulged out over the string. A four-inch piece trailed off from the binding. He seemed to be beating himself up for having been caught, hating himself, regretting over and over again whatever he had done to end up tethered, enslaved, and subjugated, totally at the mercy of whoever had caught him.
Immediately I said to the pigeons, “I’m going to put out extra today so we make sure Maroon Pigeon gets enough. Please let him in to near the sees to eat. He needs to eat.” These pigeons don’t compete for their food yet I wanted him to know that someone was watching out for him and that something was being done to acknowledge what he had gone through. During one of the times he had stopped, lost in depression and melancholy, I said to him, “Maroon Pigeon it’s ok. You made it back. You had the strength and the courage to get away. Please be proud of that. You’re a brave pigeon. And please don’t feel badly or hate your self for being caught. It can happen to anyone.” I told him about how I had been stabbed and beaten because instead of being aware of my surroundings when I was at a park after running, at about 3:30am, I had been stupidly wondering why some of my family members were doing such appalling and cruel things to each other. I told him that I had hated my self for a long time after that happened because if I had been paying attention, it never would have happened. I also told him about how I was raped at gunpoint and therefore I could understand the feeling of total helplessness he must have felt when he was held down to earth by the string. In those situations, I told him, there are no choices. “I understand, Maroon Pigeon, I do, but please forgive your self. You have a life to live.” He listened, but he was so deep in processing what had happened, I don’t think much could have helped in those first 48 hours after he came back.
Then on the third day, I remembered that in the summer of 2017, a small hen had shown up with her two feet tied together with string. She could only take very small steps and her hip and knee on one side were badly injured. She limped and had to pull herself along with her wings when she was eating, lying down on the pavement.
“Maroon Pigeon, I remembered today, that a few years ago a pigeon showed up here with string. It took three months for it to disintegrate. Please don’t give up. It will be a long three months, and painful but you can do it. She did it. You can too.”
Maroon Pigeon had been standing with his back to me, hunched down, staring at nothing. When I finished talking, he turned his head and looked at me for a long time. For the first time he was thinking about something other than being caught, it seemed.
Then he turned and took a step, calmly, with purpose, and with his head up. He no longer seemed to be in a daze. With his pre-capture steadiness and determination, he walked towards where the other pigeons were eating, and joined in. It seemed as if he had hope.
Everyday from then on, I would always say, first thing, “Where’s Maroon Pigeon? How is he doing?” He would stick his head out from beneath the car, sometimes looking me in the eye, sometimes moving forward to get to the feed. Some days he seemed annoyed by the attention. Some day he seemed resigned to accepting it. As the weeks went by, the string loosened slowly, way too slowly, still it loosened and loops of it fell away. Those three loops around his ankle were still awfully tight. The pressure didn’t release from them a bit and many days Maroon Pigeon was obviously exhausted from the pain. In December, the hard days came, because it had been almost two months. Now Maroon Pigeon would sometimes look at me as if asking, “Are you sure? Are you sure this string will come off? Will it be in three months?” All I could do was say, “It may take a little bit longer than three months but it will disintegrate. I’m sorry Maroon Pigeon. That’s all I can really promise.” And everyday I said to him, “If you decide to go somewhere else, please come back and show me that the string is gone. Please show me. I need to know that you are free of the string. I want to know that you have a life without the string. Please? Will you come back and show me?”
On December 29 I was in the middle of putting out the pigeons’ food when a person drove up and yelled at me, “You’re doing a terrible thing! That’s terrible, terrible!” At only one other time in ten years has anyone ever criticized getting the food to the birds. That person walked over and said, “What are you doing? We’re already overrun with pigeons.” That person was calm and able to carry on a conversation. We did. He learned a bit about pigeons and I learned a bit about why people don’t like them. The person on December 29 was really on edge and it seemed as if a whole lot of other things might be bothering them. Seeing pigeons eating was the final straw. It didn’t matter that I didn’t try to talk to this person anyway. They immediately got on the phone for a few minutes. Then they drove off.
In what felt like less than three minutes one of the managers who I had never met came barreling out of the gym. “You can’t feed the birds,” he shouted. He was striding towards me looking really upset. “We just got a call from the city. We’re guilty of a code violation. You can’t feed the birds.” “But I’ve been feeding them for ten years, because you’ve been kind enough to allow it,” I said meekly, knowing that nothing I could say would make a difference. “Well, you can’t do it any more. And now we have to clean up all of that.” He looked past me to where the water containers were on the ground. “I’ll get them,” I said. I walked over and dumped out the water. I sensed a wave of shock and disappointment from the sixty pigeons who were standing and listening. Twenty or so birds were busy over in a corner eating as fast as they could. The other sixty, stood, stunned.
“That’s it?” he said. I nodded. “What about the boxes of seeds? I was told you were putting out boxes and boxes, large boxes of seeds. Where are the boxes?” I shook my head, my whole world crumbling now, because I was finding out that someone had lied to try prevent the pigeons from getting their food.
He looked confused. I felt awful. He and everybody else had been so wonderful and understanding for ten years. Now, I suspected, someone had unloaded on him in a way he did not deserve.
“Thank you for ten years. I learned so much about pigeons.” At that point I couldn’t help it anymore and just started to full on cry.
He nodded and went back to the gym.
I resumed walking my laps around the parking lot. About fifteen of the pigeons went with me. Some flew up in front of me, hovering in place. Some flew in tight circles around my head, the tips of their wings touching my hair. Some sat down on the pavement yards ahead of me so that when I got to that spot I had to step around them. Others just walked. They were doing everything they could think of to cheer me up.
When I got back to my car, White Pigeon, a gleaming grizzle who of all of the three grizzles in the group had the most impossibly bright white feathers, stood looking really angry. How does a pigeon look angry? I can’t say exactly but White Pigeon seemed to understand the enormity of what had just happened. About eight other pigeons stood with him, looking tense and confused. The ones who had been walking with me sort of milled around, while about twenty were looking through the gravel for any remaining seeds. The rest, the ones who only stopped in for a few minutes to eat, had taken off.
“I’m sorry, birds. I let you down. I’m sorry I couldn’t make this turn out differently.” White Pigeon looked at me. I got in my car and left.
Now, here, if I am going to continue with the chronological narrative, I would need to describe in gory detail who said what, who did what, then who said what, then who did what, and on and on to stop pigeons from getting food. This is the part that has been preventing me from writing about Maroon Pigeon.
I thought I could do it but I can’t. I don’t want to relive it. It’s too sickening. Instead of a narrative, hopefully this list will suffice.
This is what happened:
Someone pretended to be a city official;
A city official told me that people pretend to be city officials all the time so it’s not a big deal that this one person did it;
People made exaggerated, fantastical claims about damage done to their property by pigeons;
Someone insisted that they had dozens of people who would not do business with the gym anymore if the pigeons were fed.
All of this to prevent pigeons from eating.
For the next three days I went to the parking lot to walk my laps. I parked in an adjacent lot, so that he pigeons wouldn’t think I would feed them. A few of them walked with me, keeping me company and probably also hoping I would break down and feed them. You know how persistent pigeons can be when they think they can make something happen. On the fourth day, no one walked with me. About thirty pigeons stood in stony silence in their spot, the spot where they or pigeons before them, had stood for ten years. Dejected, depressed, they stood, ignoring me. Where were the rest of the group of eighty? They had listened to the conversation on December 29 and figured it would be a better use of time to look for food elsewhere, I guess. Maroon Pigeon and White Pigeon were part of that group.
Then on the fifth day, everyone was gone. I was relieved. Good. I concluded that everyone had found a way to replace the food they were getting. I was wrong. A few weeks later, January 25 dawned with pouring rain, the kind of rain we here in Anycity in Anydesert, USA, get maybe four times a year. Pounding rain with wind, almost no visibility and no let up. Later that day I went to a higher elevation in the valley to do something and along with everyone else, was pelted with hail.
Having been raised in New England where, if you let the weather stop you from doing things, you probably won’t end up doing much, I put on some wool socks, stuck my feet in some grocery store plastic bags and put on my shoes. I drove the mile to the parking lot. The weather was so bad that anyone who had far to drive to get to the gym had wisely stayed away. The parking lot had maybe six cars in it. But sadly, sadly, sadly, the parking lot was full of pigeons, obsessively scouring every inch for something to eat, in the pouring, driving rain and wind.
Although I had really missed visiting with the pigeons, I had been truly glad that they seemed to have moved on. The pain I felt at seeing these once healthy, joyful, proud pigeons scrounging for food in a parking lot was excruciating. I kept walking, asking myself, “What can I do? What can I do?” I came into view of where we used to have the water containers on the gravel median. My heart stopped. There, sitting all by himself, in the pouring rain, was White Pigeon. I kept walking until I was facing him. I had never described any of these pigeons as “my pigeon.” Right then, I did. My beautiful White Pigeon, who had sensed whenever things were getting heavy for me and had cheered me up by getting underfoot and following me around, was sitting in the rain. Not standing, sitting, looking as if he had given up. White Pigeon can’t get sick, I said to myself. He can’t be hungry. I have to do something.
Later that evening, I called the gym. A manager and I decided to try just giving food, no water, and doing it in a way which would attract as little attention as possible. He is a very understanding and compassionate person.
The next day I put out food. The strange thing was, all of the forty or so pigeons who were still in the area, weren’t in that corner of the parking lot. They were all perched on the roofs of buildings fifty to a hundred yards away. No one came over after the food was out. I walked my laps and then sat in my car on the other side of the parking lot to eat lunch. After about ten minutes, four pigeons flew over and ate for a while. They were replaced by another small group and another. This was the epitome of discreet. How did the pigeons know? How did they know that now, they could get food but they had to be stealth about it? I don’t know. All I could do was shake my head and say to myself, “Damn, those birds are smart.”
This pattern continued for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. No pigeons in the parking lot, with forty of the original eighty perched on the roofs of nearby buildings. They came in threes and fours, ate and left.
On Friday as I drove towards that part of the parking lot, I saw something different. The whole corner was full. It looked as if all eighty pigeons were present, plus all of the mourning doves and the collar neck doves who participated in eating were perched on the fence and on the power lines, something like one hundred doves. I drove over and got out of my car. “What’s going on, birds? Are you ok? Is something wrong?” No one moved. No males were driving any females. No one was meandering around looking for grit or anything to eat. Everyone stood totally still, as if at attention. I began looking at each pigeon and the space between each pigeon, becoming nervous that maybe someone was injured. Then I saw him. Maroon Pigeon. In the center of the back row, Maroon Pigeon, with no string.
I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t seen him for a month and now here was everybody assembled to show me that his string was gone. Maroon Pigeon was free! “Thank you birds. Thank you. Maroon Pigeon, you did it. You did it!” Maroon Pigeon turned and stood in profile. When he turned he had stuck his foot out, to show that it was free.
You could probably come up with many ways of summarizing that series of events. I have come up with a few. Today my summary is this: a few people put a lot of time and energy into lying, making exaggerated claims, and pressuring the kind and understanding management staff of a business with the goal of preventing someone from feeding some birds. Those same birds were smart and sensitive enough to pick up on my worries about Maroon Pigeon. They organized themselves to be together on the very special day when I would see that Maroon Pigeon no longer had the string cutting into his ankle. Those birds can’t get help with their food after we have taken away most of their foraging habitat? Those birds are a problem?
Maroon Pigeon’s sunny, happy go lucky, serene demeanor hasn’t returned. He is serious and thoughtful yet he seems to have made the transformation from being ashamed of being caught to being proud of what he accomplished: escaping, enduring three months of pain and the physical reminder from the string of being helpless and subjugated. He stands tall and seems to be ok with being himself. Plus, good news! Maroon Pigeon has mate.
Whether it’s being tethered by string or having the cold barrel of a revolver slammed into your temple, the experience of being helpless and subjugated stays with you. Even the happy feelings from a perfect day can be engulfed and swept away by the realization that whatever you are happy about could be taken away in one moment. I wish I didn’t know that. I wish Maroon Pigeon didn’t know that.
