devil pigeon

I saw the craziest, most feral looking pigeon that I've EVER seen today in downtown Dallas walking back to work from a pleasurable lunch with my work peeps at Tuk Tuk - wonderful place, get the cashew chicken!

Anyway, we were walking back, and just to give you a visual of where we were walking, Tuk Tuk is not actually on a street, per se, but it's in a breezeway between Main and Elm streets in the middle of downtown. Right next to Campisi's. And right next to The News Stand (a recent addition) that opens ever so pragmatically at 10am. Nothing I like better than going to get a paper and a bagel early in the almost midday, just after I've had time to check cnn.com and do an hour and a half of work. Hmm....

But I digress...

We were walking out of the breezeway back on to Main St. and there is a crowd of pigeons around, and one of them catches my eye. It's hopping ceaselessly up and down trying to eat a piece of what I'm assuming to be pizza crust by stabbing it repeatedly with it's weathered beak. It's got red eyes, which after looking up pigeons upon online, it's common for "street pigeons" to have varying eye colors, so I guess that explains that, but it was nevertheless very evil looking.

Then I look down and notice that it's got strange feathers all the way down it's legs and covering it's talons, almost as if it's wearing snow boots. Evil snow boots. It was crazy! I've never seen a pigeon like this before! It looked crazy!! The eyes on the side of their heads make it seem like they're looking straight at you no matter what they're doing....and they probably are!

Anyway, when I was able to stop saying to my co-workers,

"Look, seriously!! Have you ever seen a pigeon that looks like that before? Seriously! That's crazy! That's strange right? You guys haven't ever seen a pigeon with evil snow boots on, right?"

We turned to head back to the office and right in front of us on the road there was the remnants of a horrible pigeon accident. Possibly involving a car or a bicycler with a grudge. The head was indistinguishable from the body in both shape and definition, and where the face SHOULD have been was only a bloody mess. Gah! Poor pigeon. Poor, weathered, rough looking dove relative.

I got back to the office and looked everywhere online for a picture of this pigeon with the "boots" on, but I found none. I did find this, pictureless description on an Urban Bird Studies site:


I also found this picture, which is probably the most ridiculous picture I've ever seen, and yet it's slightly endearing that someone holds pigeons (or maybe just this pigeon specifically) on so high a pedestal.



Oh sweet, sweet rats of the sky.