Pigeons Must Die

To work. That's where I'm going. Today the air is warm and gentle and I feel my thoughts easily gliding over the rooftops of the downtown buildings, dreaming of far off lands, or at least not being at work.

As I walk toward my building I see a pigeon lying on the ground with slowly blinking eyes. The bird is on the verge of death. People rush by, but I stand looking down on this lonesome, pitiful sight. This is a bird that no one wants, and no one cares in the least if it dies unceremoniously on the sidewalk. The pigeons are known to crap profusely downtown, as they perch on networks of transportation cables above intersections, leaving corners splatter painted with their white-green shit. I always approach those corners cautiously, reminded of a day I obliviously pounded the pavement in an interviewee black suit, and became appalled and disgusted to notice a white watery smear on my lapel. Yet despite that insult, I can't help but feel a small, creeping sadness looking down on this feeble bird. But, like everyone else, I walk on, though I shrug, and the air feels a little less warm.

I'm reminded of a documentary I once saw where a baby monkey who had met its untimely death as it climbed power lines and was electrocuted in the streets of an Indian city was lovingly scooped up by random passerby, who managed to cover the tiny, lifeless body with brightly colored ceremonial powders and a shrowd before commencing a brief funeral march down the street, holding the body aloft on a pyre. Monkeys, among others, are sacred animals in India. Pigeons, in San Francisco, however, are somewhere near the opposite of sacred. I try to imagine a San Francisco where pigeons are cherished and often fed treats for the purpose of good luck, akin to how it is considered good luck in some parts of India to offer a cow a bit of fruit, for example. I think the effects of such a shift in regard would result in not just a few fouled intersections, but a city blanketed in thin white excrement, because pigeons, though relegated to the ranks of other nasty pests like rodents and ants, manage to do quite well despite the lack of largess shown to them by the people of San Francisco.