On my second day in Europe, a frantic, low-flying pigeon in London almost ran beak-first into my face. Since then I´ve run into large quantities of pigeons on an almost daily basis, although perhaps "run at" is a more appropriate term, as I get a lot of satisfaction in chasing them down and watching them hop hop hop cautiously away from me, or take off all at once in a great smattering of feathers if I come a bit too close for comfort.
I really do love doing this, and I think it´s got relatively little to do with the fact that one almost took my head off in England. I also don´t think it comes from any instinct to assert my own dominance over a lesser species, although I feel a bit ashamed at this suggestion. Rather I think it´s tied to the same instinct that leads me to make sculptures out of salt shakers in resturants, bounce pencils off my desk during classes and stare longingly at playgrounds, even though I know I´m too old for them -- I am nothing if not easily entertained.
And flapping, frantic pidgeons are nothing if not entertaining.
Of course this has, along with staking salt shakers and bouncing pencils, gotten me in trouble more than once.
Exhibit A: in a Madrid park I spotted a huge flock pigeons all hanging out in a corner by a fountian. They have no where to go but up when I run and jump at them, and they all go flying into the sky like paint onto a Pollack canvas. What I don´t notice is a nearby old lady who surely catches a wing or two upside the head or two as fifty pigeons hurdle right past her. My two friends point this out to me after the fact and I feel terrible. Girl friend says to guy friend, "I´ve got an idea -- let´s play pretend like we´re all a family: we´re married and Aaron is our grown-up autistic child!" Ha. Ha. Ha.
Exhibit B: in case you guys didn´t know, there are a TON of pigeons in the square at Vatican City! Like sand on the seashore. I wasn´t the only one chasing them around this time -- some of my friends also got into the action too, and there were a few kids not much bigger than pigeons themselves toddling around after the nervous birds. I didn´t chase any away that day, only walked directly toward them and watched them part before me like the Red Sea. And I didn´t even need a divine staff! I tailed a few individuals, seeing how close I could get to them before they´d finally take off into the air, which usually wasn´t very long after they realized they were being stalked. One, however, just kept hopping away from me faster and faster, either unable or unwilling to open his wings. In an open plaza (s)he could run, but definetly not hide, and truth be told, (s)he couldn´t really run that well either. We went around in wide, looping circles, me slowly gaining speed, the bird slowly growing more and more harried as it hopped. It got to the point where either I would catch it with my bare hands or it would finally give up and fly away. The moment of truth! Who would win, man or bird?! Then, WHAM! I was concentrating on the pigeon and not on the little girl who was chasing her own bird right into my path. The bird got away, the child was unhurt, the mother did not press charges or even look upset. But I felt stupid. And I didn´t even know what language to use to appologize. I went with Italian since we were, you know, in Italy.
But today, I had the most amazing pigeon experience ever!!! (This may seem quaint to those of you who live in big cities, but I have never had to share a city with a large avian population before, so I´m going to have "pigeon experiences" and a few of them are going to be amazing. So there.)
Back in Granada I was walking home from a shopping trip with my friends Erin and Heather. (I bought new deoderant, as I realized mid-way through our close-contact trip in Italy that mine had been giving me a terrible rash.) As we passed through the plaza, I trailed a few pigeons as we walked, and then noticed a large congregation by the fountian, so I ran to scatter them. Erin ran after me to help out, but being admittedly not as well-versed in pigeon chasing as myself, she slipped on a patch of water and crashed to the ground. The seat of her pants were soaked, she was emberassed, shaken up and the three of us decided to sit on a nearby bench for a few minutes so I could give a short lecture on the techniques of safe pigeon chasing.
We hadn´t been sitting long before an old man in a wool jacket began breaking up a large loaf of french bread and tossing it in large chunks where the pigeons had formerly been. Eventually a few got up the courage to return and start pecking at the bread. These were very well-fed birds -- along with being downright frighteninly, I swear at least one of them had a double chin. But the man kept throwing out bread. And more and more pigeons began arriving.
I speculated that the man was baiting the pigeons with the bread and then using the pigeons as bait for silly American kids like us who would chase after them and slip on the water he had probably spilled there earlier. Devious!
But he really didn´t need to be using up that much bread. We just sat there watching him and talking and after about 10 minutes, after he was tossing the last of his second large loaf, and it became clear to me that he wasn´t just tossing out stale leftovers. He walked over to us with a bit of the crust, smiling. The girls thought he was offering the bread to us and sort of waved him away, but I could tell he had something to say to us.
He explained, in slow, simple Spanish, why he was really there. It was pay back, he said. Making things even again. During the Spanish Civil War the people had very little to eat. There was no food, and he was hungry. So to get by, he had to eat a lot of pigeons. Now, there is food. So he´s feeding the pigeons that had once fed him.
"It´s a good story," I told him. And I should have added, important.
I don´t know as much about the Civil War as I should, but I am aware that most of the adults I know here in Spain lived under Franco´s dictatorship. And those who were old enough had also been through the terrible fighting and violence. The pigeon man I had been lame spinning conspirisy stories about was a testiment to what the people had been through, and these bread crumbs were his own personal vow not to forget how hard and awful it had been. But maybe more than that, they were a way of expressing thanks for the bounty and freedoms he has now.
So I guess I learned a lot today.
