I used to hate pigeons. I thought they were ugly and stupid and shaped like footballs, which apparently made it okay to loathe them. (What the hell, younger me?)
I can't pinpoint an exact moment when that changed, although for some reason a reading of Zadie Smith's White Teeth factored in, which is odd because I recall pigeons or some other city fowl described as an object of intense hatred in that book, which I otherwise don't recall with much clarity. Maybe holding up a mirror of pointless pigeon hate was the point. At any rate, as with other paradigm shifts over the years, this little inconsequential evolution occurred slowly, subtly, and largely subconsciously so that I only noticed it six months ago upon disembarking from the bus for the first time to walk the few blocks to my new job in downtown Detroit, where, picking my way through the flow of pigeons moving in eddies and swirls around my feet, I regarded them with delight.
I read once that pigeons are among the only birds that can swallow (hold the dick jokes, please, god, what's wrong with you), an adaptation to city dwelling where the water sources consist mainly of puddles. Other birds have to capture water in their beaks and tilt their heads back. If it's true (yeah okay I'll look it up eventually), it's a surprisingly innovative attribute. Pigeons, stolid, quiet, slow, with their ungainly head-bobbing gait and such awkwardly large bright pink feet that you almost want to give them fashion advice (like seriously guys those don't go with ANYTHING), possess this unassuming, nearly unique, incredibly practical power that enables them to live their humble pigeon lives near people.
Once I realized my loathing had transmuted into respect, I began watching them as I walked among them in the mornings. I found a calm dignity in their staring gold-ringed eyes to match the wild pride I see in seagulls. I noticed the multiplicitous diversity in their coloration -- no two alike -- delightful waddling snowflakes cast in all existing shades of gray and white and brown; I love the brown ones best. I enjoyed their unhurried wariness toward human passersby, liked seeing how closely I could approach before they edged away. Doubtless I look a little unhinged, eyeing these flocks of winged city waste with a huge grin on my face, but god, they're so pretty.
Yesterday as I stepped off the bus and walked briskly toward the crosswalk, something in the sidewalk caught my eye. A little self-consciously, because people in cities are supposed to be in a constant state of striding purposefully toward some important destination, not pausing to admire the scenery like tourists or weirdos, I stooped to see, impressed into the concrete, a line of pigeon tracks.
It made me unbelievably happy. The impressions in the sidewalk there are reserved to the stamps of the manufacturers. Handprints and initials (and faceprints, if you're Michael Scott) haven't touched them. And yet some pigeon, at some point in the past, ignorant of the yellow tape and "sidewalk closed" signs, walked calmly across a freshly poured sidewalk and left, in a simple, humble monument to human progress, a human legacy.
In the pale light of an early autumn dawn over a city still coming back from the dead, that little line of accidental tracks was heart-stoppingly beautiful.
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