A pigeon sky hung above my colony. It was the kind of sky that hid us well. It was so perfectly diffuse and gray that it was a part of the better colored buildings. It was the kind of day that wrapped you up and made you safe, not that our colony ever had anything to fear. Little birds, sea birds, and even those clever black ones only amounted to minor food competition. Even those hordes of mammals that usually occupied the under-story only fed us.

So it was puzzling to me when the roosting pipe started to feel a little more spacious. There had hardly been any jostling for a better position in the past month. Sure, some pigeons leave for other colonies or find part of a building to make their tomb, but the pipe was always crowded before now.

It was on that same safe pigeon-sky day that the answer presented itself. If I’d blinked, I would have missed it. It was a streak of a bird, faster than any bird I had seen, faster than anything I had ever seen. It was even faster than those obnoxious beasts the under-story mammals rode around in. The bird tore out of that soft comforting sky and into a pigeon on the wing.

I watched the quick-bird take the pigeon up to the roof of the neighboring building. I was baffled. Birds catching other birds … on the wing? How was that possible? I noticed one of the older pigeons nearby and hopped over to him.

“Did you just see that?” I asked.

“See what?” he replied blankly.

“That bird just grabbed a pigeon right out of the air!”

“So?”

“What do you mean, so? If something can just grab us from the sky… well, how do we escape that? What do we do?” I earnestly was hoping the other pigeon had an answer, or was leading me, in a round-about way, to an answer, making me figure it out for myself.

“If something can nab us out of the sky, there‘s nothing to do. Now, if you don‘t mind, I‘m going to look for some food and a hen before it gets dark.”

I guess he wasn’t that old. I needed to find someone with more on his mind than hens and mammal scraps.

#

My attempted inquires all failed. Not one other bird in the colony seemed the least bit concerned with anything out of the ordinary.

Food, hens, and sleep: it's all scavenge, roust, and court... hmm, court... The hen! I courted a hen a while back. She should be sitting on eggs by now. That should give a bird plenty of time to think.

I flew down to the old rust-spotted shed in the breezeway, squeezed through the small hole to the loft and looked around to get my bearings. This was the hatching place of most of the birds in the colony. This wasn't a place that you go to unless you're a hen with some eggs to lay. The place smelt of droppings and dander; there was no smell of mammal food or promising sea wind to burst into. But, according to the hens, it just felt right.

I spotted the hen I’d mated with in a good nest with more paper than dung. One of those mammals must have cleaned the place up before she made her nest. Out of habit I puffed out my chest as I approached her. She got up and started to hop away.

"Wait!" I said.

"Wait, nothing. I'm trying to hatch some eggs here! Shove off."

"No, I didn't mean to court. I need to ask you something."

She turned around and gave me a curious sideways look with one of her eyes.

I had to just blurt it out before her curiosity turned to annoyance. "There is a bird. It's taking us from the sky. I don't know what to do about it. No one else is interested in doing anything. I thought that maybe you could think something up on your nest."

She blinked at me. "Think?"

"Yes, think; there must be something we can do. I mean it's grabbing us right out of the sky! I've seen one of the mammal's little companions kill a bird once, but not while it was in the air! This thing kills in the air! How does someone escape that?"

"Well this is the third chick I've hatched this month. If this one gets it there'll be others." she said before she settled back down on her nest, her back facing me.

#

So that was it, the last bird in my colony had only empty headed retorts for me, and after that wonderful time early one morning I had with her on that window sill before that crazy mammal banged on the glass and nearly cut us off before I was finished fertilizing.

There were more pigeons of course, other colonies close by, a stray group might show up and compete for some especially good mammal spill; but the birds from the other colonies seemed very much like the birds from my own, always repeating those basic two tasks: mate, eat, mate, eat over and over again, with complete disregard to anything else; it was ridiculous! But then that's not all pigeons did, there was some talk- mostly about where the next meal was coming from- however the occasional peace of gossip did make its way into day-to-day chatter. It was the rumors about that colony that made its home on a peculiar roof that had my interest. An abnormal roof just might make for abnormal pigeons, pigeons with perhaps some ideas that could be coaxed out of them.

#

The strange building that the other pigeons whispered about had a slanted roof. It was so incredibly slanted that I was surprised to see the pigeons could indeed stand on it, but there they were just the same, packed onto it, more than I'd seen in any other colony. The only bare spot was a second roof with an even more ridiculous slant that was topped off in what would have been a handy perch had the surface of the perch not been covered in spikes- the whole thing was a testament to the mammal's absurd way that they did things. The whole thing struck me as so odd that I momentarily forgot about the monstrously speedy bird as I approached the colony: I saw no place that these birds could place a nest, and yet there was hardly a place to land on the roof.

I was almost over-whelmed upon landing, there were so many birds surrounding me. I began to wonder how this many pigeons could even feed themselves but then it occurred to me I could just ask one of the birds. I shuffled around, wedging myself in between pigeons on the moving roof until I found an older pigeon that might have some answers to my greater and lesser questions.

"Good day" I said in greeting.

"Good day?" The other bird looked at me inquisitively out of one eye in much the same manner as my hen had.

"Err, I mean hello, I'm new here." I stammered in reply while struggling to remain near enough to the old bird to retain a conversation while fighting the current of birds on the roof.

"Hummm, I can tell." I could have sworn that he raised an eyebrow in a mime of a human expression.

"How's that?" I replied.

"Pigeons here usually don't have much use for small talk, the mammals below hand out so much food that there isn't much need for coordination. Everyone just eats and breeds." The old bird said.

I suppressed a comment about it being much the same in my own colony and decided to cut to my driving question since the old bird had answered my question about this colonies 'culture.' "I guess that might work out for you guys for now but there is this small gray and brown bird that can rip a pigeon from the sky! It's been feeding off of my colony for a while now and-"

The older pigeon cut me off. "What one pigeon at a time?" He scoffed at my question and moved out of the way of a couple in the midst of courtship. I was a little perturbed at his response, single pigeons were important weren't they? Maybe there was something wrong with him, there is usually one or two odd birds in every colony; maybe if I kept looking I could find someone both smart and sane.

Unfortunately after an extensive search and questioning the other pigeons of this strange colony provided very typical responses to all my inquiries. They shrugged and told me of the nests in their near-by tree in the same manner that they shrugged the invincible bird off. They'd say "We're comfortable, chicks hatch every day, there is plenty of food here, why should we care?" Exasperated I flew back to my colony.

#

Unlike those pigeon-chicks of the slanted colony that were being hatched relatively safe trees or my own chicks in that safe, smelly shack I was hatched in a nest on a window sill. It was a very unusual and dangerous place to be hatched; the mammals have a bad habit of clearing nests on window sills, with or without eggs in them. I'm sure the nest couldn't have lasted long on that ledge. I might have been the only bird raised there. The colony had to have been crowded that year to have forced my mom to pick that sill. No hen in her right mind would have nested there if there was much of an alternative. For all the danger that came with being raised so close to those unpredictable mammals it was interesting to watch them through the window.

Some scenes turned from interesting to violent rather quickly. On one occasion after the male mammal had successfully courted a young female a second male entered the dwelling. There was enough shouting to frighten my mother off, but I could not fly so I was forced to watch the outlandish scene of violence unfold before me. The shouting rapidly devolved into tossing and then blows. They fought each other as I've never seen birds fight over a mate. Blood was drawn and, as they pummeled each other, the room was torn to shreds, the things in this glass bowl of chaos were rendered useless as they rendered each other limb from limb. They didn't stop when one was seriously wounded like any sensible bird would when one was clearly the victor. They had to be dragged apart by other mammals in blue with the female rubbing an arm in silence in a corner.

Some of their other more peculiar behaviors I still remember and imitate just to try and find some use in the various acts. Pacing is the odd behavior that I decided to try today.

Pacing looks like the courting dance, but the mammal I saw growing up did it alone. I resigned myself to the activity on the edge of the colony's lower building, away from the other birds. The other pigeons were not interested in the problem, or at least solving it. So it made sense to mimic the mammals: always running about, sometimes for food or each other, but sometimes for no reason at all.

So I paced, alone, hoping the very un-pigeon-like action would bring about some kind of solution. So far it was only bringing me a few curious looks from the other pigeons and a slight case of nausea.

I kept it up, though, sure something would come of it. Something eventually did. I saw it happening in one of the sidewalk trees- my inspiration for attack. One of those clever black birds was over a small nest doing... something to its contents. I flew to the tree to get a better look. Landing awkwardly on a branch, not too far from the nest, I settled in to watch.

The scene was messy. At first the bird looked over the edge of the nest and opened its mouth as a hen would feed her chicks. Instead of feeding them, the bird began to gobble up one of the chicks. I left before I saw any more. I flew right back to the roosting pipe: the safe, secure center of the colony.

But it wasn't secure, not nearly as secure as I'd have wanted it to be anyway. I heard something landing behind me and turned to see the clever black bird, the last entrails of the baby bird being gobbled up and slowed before addressing me.

"You there pigeon! You aren't planning on telling all your damned friends about my niche are you?" He demanded in a harsh voice, some blood flicking from his long black beak.

"N-no." Was all I could stammer. It was a rarity that crows spoke to pigeons and even more rare for them to speak to us on any kind of friendly terms.

"Oh what, too good for this kind of food?" He shoot back.

"No, it's just-" He cut me off, like the old bird, except with a sharp rasp that can only come from a crow.

"You damn pigeons are so naive, you don't even know your own power. Look at you trembling like that! You know that crows used to get all the best human grub before you guys just came in and breed and breed and breed-" This time I cut him off, my curiosity had overridden my fear.

"Human grub?" I asked.

"Those mammal things- look, if you guys stopped to figure some things out instead of clustering together in your own little world like a bunch of barley-wild chickens..."

"Chickens?"

"Never mind." He said twitching his head. "Just don't think of muscling in on my niche." He turned around and was about to take off when I got brave.

"Wait!" I said. "Have you noticed this sky-bird taking pigeons in flight?" I said attempting my most technical vocabulary.

"Sky bird? You mean the falcon? Yea, I've seen it, too bad it'll never be able to finish you all off though."

"But..." The black bird just shook it's head and took off.

I shook my feathers. Now I knew why pigeons didn't hang out by the roof's edge, why we don't pace and why we don't copy those mammals; there are things better unseen, conversations with imposable birds best un-had.

But what about that killer bird from the sky? I can't escape it by eating and defecating on the pipe all day! That clever bird's opinion of the situation couldn't be trusted; those types always had some trick or other going to cheat you out of something. And that old pigeon was just a nut. No there was as real problem here and it had to have a real solution.

There had to be something I was missing. Something that pigeons just don't do... Oh, attack! If I could get it before it gets me, then I'd be in the clear. The whole colony would be in the clear. I can't attack it directly, but the scene in the tree, with that vile black bird, that's the way. I'll kill its chicks. Than maybe we'll be safe when this sky-bird dies. Who knows? Maybe it will disappear just as some hens disappear when their nests are scattered.

I just had to wait for its next flight.

#

My eyes hurt from staring into a bright sky. My neck hurt from always looking up. I was hungry from days of searching the sky and not scavenging enough. I didn’t want to look away for too long; this bird was too fast for that. That gut-reaching scene just had to repeat itself. Something that can get its food right from the sky so effortlessly can’t just go away, it wouldn’t just go away. It had to be back.

Finally my vigilance paid off. I saw, for the second time, the sky-bird hit a pigeon in mid-air. This time, though, I didn’t go running for the nearest pigeon on the roof. This time I watched as the sky bird carried the poor, still struggling pigeon up to a window sill high up on the tall neighboring building. I looked at the spot where the sky-bird landed for a long time to remember it, and then began my journey to the top of the world.

#

I fell on a window sill part way up the building, completely exhausted. The other pigeon on the sill looked at me sideways.

“Strong wind?” the other bird asked.

“No, I have... I have to get to the top of this building.”

“What?”

“There‘s this bird and...” I stopped. I needed to save my breath. Pigeons don’t usually climb through the air and buildings on purpose preferring to just go to the next highest place where they feel secure, smell food or see hens. I didn’t need to describe what my mission was with someone who was just going to give me a blank expression. I didn’t need to sit next to him, either. As soon as I caught my breath, I began to climb again, stopping on window sills when I got tired.

I didn’t stop until I hit the window sill under the one with the nest on it. I huddled up against the window so that I couldn't be seen from the other sill and set my gaze at the sky. I settled in to wait for the sky-bird to leave, if the bird saw me it’d kill me just like those other pigeons. There would be no flying away.

The wait from the sill didn’t seem as long as it was back in the colony; maybe it was because I was close to finishing my task. I saw the sky-bird fly off to my colony to grab another poor pigeon. I immediately flew up to the nest.

When the nest came into view I almost missed a flap as I went to land: there were no eggs. There were no chicks. Not even an adolescent. Nests are always full, always. But here was an empty one with no promise of new terrifying sky-birds. I inhaled the unexpected victory I had just been handed and something else besides the freezing winter air filled my lungs. I turned around to see a group of hens fly by.

I waited to see where they landed and then left the window ledge.

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 01.05.2010

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