Avian Cannibalism on the Rise?

Imagine living in a cabin in the woods. You sip your morning coffee on the front porch, watching bobcats frolic in yonder bushes. A red-tailed hawk circles overhead. Freshwater dolphins play Marco Polo in a nearby creek. I think it would be nice, living in a cabin in the woods.

But I don't. I live in Adams Morgan and am beginning to grow familiar with a whole new breed of urban wilderness. I can handle the rats. I deal with the roaches. Once I saw a feral cat in my courtyard and invited him up for lemonade. But there is one thing I absolutely can not face without requiring Dramamine and a hot shower: Pigeons eating fried chicken off the sidewalk.

I am completely convinced that this is some lost 8th sign of the apocalypse. Oh Colonel Sanders, don't forsake me now!

I see this sight all the time, and it grosses the living biscuits out of me. It happens mostly near fried chicken restaurants (duh,) as people leave their half-eaten drumsticks out on the sidewalk and they are descended upon by mobs of angry pigeons. And I mean mobs. It would be less disgusting if it was only one or two Hannibal Feathers, but I've seen whole flocks of pigeons fighting each other for the grizzled remains of what was probably their great-grandfather. It's like some scene from The Road, but without the lyricism.

I know that, out in real nature, animals eat each other all the time. I wouldn't bat an eye at, say, a chicken hawk eating a chicken. There's some sport there and the chicken hawk probably won't get diabetes from its conquest. But there is already something so base about pigeons that I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt on issues of intra-species culinary ethics. They might urinate on people from above, but I hoped that they would at least limit their trans fat intake. I was wrong.

But who am I to judge? Pigeons were once domesticated animals, brought to Nova Scotia by European settles in 1606. Some escaped and went wild, and now 400 years later our sidewalks are carpeted by a flying menagerie of cooing, winged bacteria. But I bet their house-bred ancestors ate only the finest imported maggots. They came garnished with parsley in cut-glass bowls. But things change and sacrifices were made.

If someone had told me two years ago that I would grow to hate slow-moving tourists on the metro, and almost trample over a boy in a wheelchair, I would laugh in their face. "Please," I would tell this fictional naysayer. "I'm nicer than that. I'm a patient, tolerant person who is able to rise above their surrounding and not become a total asshole when faced with under-ambulatory crowds." Two years later and I need a klonopin to not turn green and double in size when someone sits too close to me on the bus.

I suspect that if the bomb dropped tomorrow, some dingy pigeon would live a hell-of-a-lot longer than I would in the post-apocolyptic future. The whole species will probably join roaches and Keith Richards in the rubble, reaping the rewards of adaptability. Eating friend chicken when and where it damn well pleases.

That's my rationale, at least. But it doesn't change the fact that its really, really gross.