Picture this. Each of us has a link to the natural world, a conduit along which we receive and transmit our co-ordinates. If we fly in circles those conduit cross and the inevitable buzz that we hear, as a result, gives us pause as we struggle to re-connect. The easiest remedy would be to cut the cable and fly free, but even a pigeon fears that, and us, well, it would spell the end, wouldn't it?
The cause of all the fuss was probably nothing more than a french fry or a chicken wing, left over from the weekend grab-fest, a morsel of human waste tossed overboard, declared unfit for consumption but exciting and invigorating to the mind of a bird. One of them spotted it, on his morning patrol, and the burst of excitement he experienced was instantly sent out over the wire, so to speak, and within seconds an entire community was fighting over enough food for one breakfast.
It would be comical, even without the comparison to our own behavior, except for the fact that when the wings were lifted and the hullabaloo softened to a sniffle, there was one pigeon who didn't take flight. He walked in circles, making spastic attempts at flight, dragging a bent and broken wing behind him. He looked up, knowing that was where he was supposed to be. Instead, he was grounded, and all in the time it takes to choke back a rotted piece of meat.
No hospital for him, no screaming sirens as the pigeon ambulance chases down his pain, no recovery or physio, and no tearful reunion six weeks from now, the cast just off and his eagerness to get back in the game palpable in the jovial greetings he gives his compatriots.
As quickly as it had begun, the war was over. A few of the hopeful hung in the air riding the breeze, looking for a missed morsel, oblivious and unaware that they had left one of there own behind, that there were fewer voices crying into the morning light, that some one's cord had been cut.
It's a tough life, that of a pigeon.
