Pigeon Fight

During a recent trip to Toronto I watched pigeons — I know, rats with wings — in the bus depot while I was waiting for my bus. Anyone who's familular with the a city for more than, say, a week has to be totally over the birds — old ladies on park benches don't bother feeding them anymore— and just perplexed by the attraction they seem to hold for others. There's no way you can sneak up on a robin or a crow before they'll fly off. Pigeons are so used to people that they won't even move if you're about to step on them. But what was special about these birds is that there were three of them, and one was sort of lopsided. I'm no veterinarian, but I think it had a broken wing, kind of slouched over and wobbling. I'm gonna name her Trina, after one of my daughters pet Cestial Goldfish [She was an egg shaped goldfish, but its eyes were pointing up words to the sky and no dorsal fin]. A gimpy, depressed fish who spent her short time in her aquarium nutrifying the environment, getting her food stolen by the other fish and eventually and most pathetically became food for the other fish.

Trina had her own tourmenter, a white speckled pigeon, tall and upright — I’ll call her Adrian — who kept jumping on her back and pecking at her, because Adrian is a total douche. The third pigeon- I’ll call him Calvin, more or less watched the fight from a distance as also the crowd of humans watching along with me. I was torn — I think most of the people there were torn — part of me wanted to break up the pigeon fight. Part of me was eight years old and wanted to take Trina home in a little shoebox and nurse her wing back to health and part of me wasn't really sure what to do. Not that it's my fight, but what do I know about bird morality? They're not sentient in the same way that I am, and what right do I have to impose my morals on them? Not to mention, what right do I have to side with Trina over Adrian? Maybe in pigeon-land, Adrian has ethics on her side here.

The good news, if you can call it that, about my moral waffling is that no one else had a strong urge to help out Trina, or maybe just turn the Bus Station slightly less violent, either. A few people sauntered up to the fighting birds with their heavy bags and screaming children in tow, but being a city pigeon, Adrian hardly noticed. No one actually swatted at her with their Daily Newspaper [which might be illegal anyway] or ran at the birds or threatened them. I waited for my bus to come, figuring that either the Greyhound would scare the fight off, or the throng of passengers disembarking would. But no, as far as I know, Adrian is still there, wailing on Trina and Calvin not doing a thing [typical male behaviour when women are fighting].

Teresa.