Or, how we went from, “Stupid pigeons!” to, “Shhh…don’t wake the pigeons!” and back again (sort of) in like 2 hours.
Our Austin life is decidedly urban, and it comes with a number of the urban life’s drawbacks. Including pigeons. They’ve been incessantly, “rooroorooing,” and crapping on our fourth story patio at least as long as we’ve lived here, and despite our best efforts to make them unwelcome --- First that was just us rapidly approaching the glass patio door, then that was us actually having to fling the door open, then as they grew immune to that we’d rush the door, fling it open and yell “shoo!”. Now I can get within striking distance and these things don’t flinch, which means I guess I’m getting a water gun -- well, despite this while I was making supper yesterday , they decided they love us and they want to share their babies with us.
For weeks now I’ve been caught in Sorites paradox of a heap, unconsciously battling my instinct that one pigeon just might become a flock of poop-mounding pigeons, while also trying to be reasonable (one pigeon does not actually equal a flock). Reason is flawed here, and it took me about 45 minutes too long to figure that out. Here is the timeline of our education : 1:30 pm = I inspect porch for poop cleaning plan. Just a porch full of poop, and a couple of pigeons that look familiar. “ Shoo!” 4:00pm = Eleanor and I get home, she shoos pigeons and then says, “I think they built a NEST!” Uhhh, yes, that is sort of a nest, but I just dropped the garlic in the pan and that’s only supposed to be alone in there for 30 seconds so I rush back and add ground beef. “We’d better get rid of that thing soon, before they put an egg in it,” says I, thoughtlessly continuing out loud, “It wouldn’t be fair to get rid of it once they have an egg.” Can pigeons understand English!?!? (Note: seven year olds can, and they are very strict about verbal contracts.) Seriously, I’m making tacos which only take a TOTAL of 30 minutes and I’m like half way done at this point which means I only have 15 minutes of work left until it’s on the table and sometime between the garlic and the serving Eleanor exclaims, “There’s an EGG now! We’re going to have baby birds!” Crap.
I feel sick to my stomach. I feel sympathetic to this pair of crappers I also kind of dislike. The two of them and their one little egg. (Ditto for Eleanor, as you might imagine.) I realize now that I know them, and it’s all making sense -- It’s been the same stupid pigeons all this time, and I wasn’t just overly influenced by all the children’s literature I take in when that one day I saw this pair waddling around and I thought, “well, they look like a little couple out house shopping." Crap.
So I think, ok, it will be an adventure (still feeling slightly sick) and we’ll make it a science project and we’ll have a front row seat on hatching baby birds, and we’ll track their progress, and all that jazz. Then Mike comes home and it gets real y’all. That list of questions Eleanor and I make in our science journal, all about what we want to investigate during a project, it morphs a bit at this point. From, “How many days does a pigeon egg take to hatch,” to, “How dangerous is a pigeon mite infestation?” Seriously. The yahoo chats Mike digs up about this exact proposition (“Uh oh, pigeons made a nest on my porch, what do I do?”) are enlightening (?). I am almost game enough to make my way through the coming piles of crap, I am almost curious enough to agree to two months of noisy baby birds outside my bedroom window, but I think we need to draw the line at bird fleas three feet from the only piece of glass in the entire apartment that opens for fresh air. I really want to draw that line, anyway. Uggcrapola.
Now it’s so complicated it makes me feel really, really bad. And so the paradox morphs into a struggle with the value of life (what lesson will Eleanor take away here?) and the responsibilities presented along that singular, very personal path we walk through life, and a bunch of other existentialist foo. But, I kill rats. Or, I have at my house in Portland, so, I do kill. And despite what Ernie's best friend Bert exudes, these are sort of like flying rats, and I should forget about their stupid yet cute little waddling selves out house shopping together. Right?!?! At any rate, something has to be decided QUICKLY because she will lay a second egg in about 24 hours. Also, I’d like to point out that after digging up all the dirty facts on porch-based pigeon farming, my husband slept well and this morning wished me luck on his way out the door.
“Oh operator, can I have the maintenance office please!?!”
