Fowl Play

Caught Orange Footed

There is a pigeon sitting on the chimney across the street. He has been there for the better part of the afternoon. Every time I glanced up from whatever I was supposed to be doing, he was there. Still in the same position, always oriented in the same direction. Which so happens to be toward my window. He is not spinning like a weather vane either. That would at least make sense. No, he is simply sitting there, as though he has nothing else to do, which may well be true. Not that I know what birds actually do, but evidently none of it requires being anywhere other than the chimney across the street. Unless he’s a remote viewer. Hmmm.

I asked his Lordship, Tobe Juan Kenobi, what he thought about it. He opened one eye, considered the question with the gravity it deserved, and said “Idunno”. Which, from a cat, is about as honest an answer as you are going to get.

Every time I look up, he is facing the same direction, head perfectly still, not so much as a feather out of place. For all I know he could be made of metal, one of those decorative chimney toppers people put up and forget about. But something tells me he is not. He is too deliberate for that, too consistent, and metal birds do not usually make you feel like you are the one being watched.

Which brings me, as most things do eventually, to the internet. Dear Google…

There is a community of people who do not believe birds are real. Not in the way you might dismiss a conspiracy theory with a wave of your hand, but with the organized conviction of a movement, complete with merch and a dedicated following. They have the kind of internal logic that, once you start pulling the thread, is considerably harder to dismiss and makes you really start to wonder. The theory, stated plainly, is that birds are surveillance drones, replacements for the original birds (the OG Birds), phased out sometime in the middle of the last century and replaced with government (or alien) operated technology designed to monitor the population from above. The ones that seem to be watching you probably are. Their migration patterns are data uploads. They recharge on power lines usually, but apparently this one has been reversed engineered and can recharge on top of a chimney.

This sits right alongside the Flat Earth Society, which also has members, as they are fond of pointing out, from all around the world. Around the world?? These things are easy to dismiss right up until you are sitting at your window on a bright afternoon with a pigeon staring at you from a chimney across the street for four hours. Without blinking, I am assuming, but it’s really hard to tell.

I once had a pigeon epiphany in high school that has stayed with me always. Sitting in a tree eating my lunch one afternoon, I found myself watching a pigeon on the pavement below for the better part of forty minutes. Then it happened. The voice of God, or something very much like it, spoke directly into my ear and told me exactly why pigeons have orange feet. The voice said the reason they have orange feet is so when they stood still, ants would come to investigate the bright orange color. Without a thought in his little pigeon brain, the bird would simply bend down and eat the ant. There was no chasing, no effort, no wasted movement, just a bright orange lure and the patience of a fisherman waiting for results. It was almost like a bird door dash. Food just came to it. I sat in that tree so long I missed English class, but it was no big deal because the teacher never took roll. And besides, I was doing an experiment in humanities. At the time I found this brilliant. And now I see it, it’s come full circle–there is a bird directly across the street on that chimney, looking straight into my window. He’s been there for hours. I find it slightly more unsettling than I probably should.

I can’t be watching a bird all day (can I?), so I put my head down and return to writing. Two hours later, I look up. The pigeon has not moved. Whether it is a government drone, an alien observer, or a bird with genuinely nowhere else to be, I cannot say with any certainty. What I can say is that the line between a watcher and a thing being watched is considerably thinner than it appears from either side of the double-paned glass.

Tobe has since relocated to the windowsill, where he is now watching the pigeon with the same unblinking attention the pigeon has been directing at me. Three of us, watching each other across a street on a bright afternoon, each presumably convinced that one of the others knows something worth knowing.

I returned to work, these words aren’t going to type themselves. When I looked up later, the pigeon was gone. Between one glance and the next, the chimney empty, the afternoon carrying on as if nothing had been sitting there for four hours. There was no departure, none that I saw. Just absence where presence had been.

I hope the pigeon got the intel he needed on me. Either that or I bored him to tears, but either way, he’s gone. Did I blow his cover? Was he called back to his spaceship? Or was he never really there at all? I looked down at Tobe and thought “where’s the bird?” With the wisdom of the ages, you know, the ones that are locked inside every cat, he looked up at me and answered my telepathic question with his feline precision… “Idunno”.