Agressive Pigeons

Talk about aggressive panhandlers, what about aggressive pigeons? Sitting on a bench at Alamitos beach, notice a Van pull up.

Dozens of pigeons surround it, making it difficult for the driver and passenger to get out. I assume it's that van, the one that often parks in the middle of the lot, opening the back door, feeding the pigeons loaves of bread. Think the pigeons must recognize the vehicle, thus the mad dash, even tho' it's parked next to the sidewalk this day. The passenger walks over to me with a chicken under her arm, and asks "are you hungry?". Must have been the look on my face, because she quickly adds, "oh, this is our pet. We brought bread to feed the pigeons and thought you might want it, so we'd give it to you, not the pigeons".

Phew. Yes, I know some homeless guys that will grab a pigeon, kill it and eat it, but if I had to kill to eat, would starve to death. Don’t even think I could kill a fish, and I do love seafood. I ask her if it's a Rhode Island Red, which it is and no idea why I would recognize it, like I know so much about breeds of chickens, lucky guess, it was red. The couple has never been to this beach, sort of homeless, or vagabonds living in the Van. I tell them about the other Van-pigeon-feeder the conversation goes on about how aggressive pigeons are becoming. No, I wasn't hungry had just ate a bag of chips.

"My, the pigeons are getting friendly", I'd thought when one jumped on my crossed leg dangling in the air foot. I've been feeding pigeons for years, and know some people that will get them to eat out of their hands, but none ever came that close to me. My thought changed when the pigeon jumped on my lap ruffling, the newspaper I was reading. He wasn't being friendly he was
aggressively demanding I share the bag of chips. Don't care for demanding people, or pigeons, so "no, you are not getting any" I tell him.

Food was never that important to me, but living on the streets, I'm always hungry, no matter how much I eat. When I'm done eating the small giveaway bags of chips, or the bought snack crackers, I always share the crumbs with the birds. Ditto the stale bread from sandwiches. There are so very many people feeding the birds, it irks me that the little suckers want my food.

Regretting now, that I didn't listen when people admonished me about feeding the little guys. They are getting spoiled and lazy; if we didn't feed them, they'd be forced to find their own food. Getting attacked~and this wasn't an isolated incident~I began to agree. Also wonder, tho' about how humans upset the balance of nature, perhaps the food supply is dwindling, causing their aggressiveness. Whatever.

Had a fun time watching the pet chicken running 'round the grass, scaring the pigeons, while the owners were trying to feed them the bread.

Posted on Thursday, June 22, 2006

Postscript: There are moments in time one wishes one had a video camera on hand~that was one of them. The flock of pigeons would land on the ground to eat the scattered bread; the chicken would run over and as a group the flock would rise in the air hovering just out of the reach of the chicken. Even the pigeons demanding my chips were part of the fun memories from street living days. Of course in 2006 self-proclaimed Bird Man of Long Beach taught me to have pigeons eating out of my hands. Blogged that tale elsewhere, will have to look it up.