Nightmares Do Come True

I found a pigeon blog today. Though I'm quite taken by the London pictures, it made me realize how far I've come in some ways.

I used to be deathly afraid of pigeons. Ask my sisters. If I was walking down a street and a pigeon was in my path, I would freeze until someone chased it away. That's kind of silly, actually: why would I want to resemble a statue to a pigeon? Later on I learned to stamp my foot and they'd get freaked out and fly away.

What was I afraid of? Well, that Alfred Hitchcock movie didn't help, but I think it was their eyes. Their sudden takeoffs weren't exactly a balm to my nerves either. There was a strange nightmare I used to have about pigeons being in my bed, and I'd fling them and they'd be rubbery. I should not have been eating Breyers at night.

As time went on my paralysis wore off, but I've always had the paranoid idea that they had it in for me. I saw one peeking its head at me around a train trestle once, and a few minutes later I saw he'd left me a little gift on my jeans. Nice.

Pigeons used to nest on the living room air conditioner, which the cats loved, and I learned to deal with it until the day my Dad brought a baby pigeon inside to relocate it to the roof. I was not pleased. Dad had such a soft heart for all living creatures.

Nowadays I can deal with the flying rats, and I even find some of them cute. I guess compared to waterbugs, anything is adorable.