Courtesy Blogg

Hello all you dutiful readers (snorts up sleeve), this post is from an email message. The Bloggstress in question worries that the woman of the story reads her blog, so she asks that I post it. And she is correct, the tale is right up my alley. I will try to post with little to no interuptions to the original message, but should I feel the need to, I will be in this font.

A woman I know has lived in Greenwich Village her entire adult life (and she’s 40-something), which is sad enough right there. She gets all enthusiastic about seeing anything with chlorophyll. Seriously, she posted a bunch of photos of weeds and asked her readers to identify them. One of them (no shit) was crabgrass. Maybe I should stop and smell the crabgrass. I like to think of myself as a person who can find the beauty in things. But … crabgrass? Really? You don’t know what this plant is?

Anyway, lately she’s had this saga that is going to KILL you (and your dad). She wanted to hang a bird feeder, after someone kindly identified a ROBIN for her in a photo. (I am not kidding.) She hung this bird feeder out on her fire escape, and then agonized that the birds weren’t finding it. Pigeons and doves would just perch on the railing but ignore the feeder. I didn’t have the heart to tell her, pigeons/doves feed on the GROUND. I kept hoping she’d get some REAL birds to be excited about, but no.

Eventually she gathered a regular crowd of birds – pigeons – that would eat and poop all over the fire escape (mainly because her feeder kept falling down and spilling, so they could eat on the floor). Of course, the falling of the feeder was a crisis situation. She tried one solution after another to keep the feeder hanging – a hook that got dislodged somehow, a piece of wood balanced between the railings, I don’t remember what all. (It was nearly as riveting as the weeks she spent trying to find a litter pan that would keep the cat piss off the wall.)

Anyway, she had “birds” and she was happy. But then the bird shit started getting to be a problem. So she tried to cover her fire escape with a plastic drop sheet, and we went through several iterations of that, where to anchor it and how to place the bricks, and how to clean the poop off the iron grates. Her biggest fear was that her presence on the fire escape would scare the birds away.

[Personal note: I would consider it a triumph to have scared pigeons away. I’ve found them to be pretty unscare-able. When I lived with your mom and worked in DC, I was always trying to kick one.] Personal note from me: I have sucessfully kicked a pigeon and will never attempt to ever again ever. Not because the plight of the forlorn pigeon has touched my heart, or that I think of them as anything other than flying rats; but because after your foot makes contact you spend the rest of the day thinking, 'oh my god, part of my body touched a pigeon! I need to boil my foot! or scrub with lye!'

All was quiet for a few days, and we had more photos of fat pigeons hanging out on the plastic-covered balcony, while the indoor cats looked out the window and plotted. BUT THEN! TRAGEDY! (Brace yourself.) Other tenants in the building complained about the spilled seeds, feathers and bird shit, and the blogger was asked to remove her feeder.

She was heartbroken. I pulled a muscle laughing.

Then there was the remorse over those poor hungry birdies relying on her for the feeder, which wasn’t there anymore. She found an undisclosed location for the feeder, but she’s not sure she’ll keep it filled if she doesn’t get to share in the joy of watching the birds herself. (Pigeons! They’re fat lazy dirty sluggish nasty PIGEONS!) So, although she contemplated leaving a trail of seeds from her fire escape to the new location (again, I am not making this up), she was afraid she’d be setting them up for disappointment when the feeder wasn’t kept filled.

Another personal note from me: I hate to have a blog post without pictures, I dont know why but i do. deal. But when I was combing the internet for Pigeon pics, they were all so gross and ... pigeoney. Blech. Then I found this one. I think the pigeon is really an afterthought. So everyone, enjoy the baby monkey cuddling a pigeon!