“ I used to think pigeons were stupid filthy birds that attacked old people. Several years ago a pigeon flew into my office and walked into an open cat carrier I left on the floor and wouldn’t leave. I call it “he” even though I never determined the gender. He didn’t seem hurt or sick. I put the carrier outside and opened the door and he wouldn’t go. Suddenly, I had a pigeon. I started googling his behaviors and discovered he was…um…courting me. I was like “Hey this won’t work, I’m a human, you’re a bird, but we can totally hang out”. I gently tried to handle him and he let me. I discovered it he had mites and he let me treat them. I discovered he loved being rubbed under his chin and beak, so I doled out chinrubs throughout the day and in response he would gently preen my fingers. I was eating Cup Noodles one day in front of the cage and he freaked out. HE WANTED SOME. He already had food that he was eating, I wasn’t starving him. I gave him a noodle and he loved that shit. The same thing happened when I ate strawberries. So I had a pigeon whose favorite food was ramen and strawberries and he knew when I was eating them and wanted me to share. I gave him a piece of noodle sparingly, I figure ramen is not good for an animal. But I gave him a bit of strawberry pretty frequently. He would go at it with his beak and look up at me, eat more, look at me, eat more, etc. It would make the feathers around his beak red so when he looked at me with crazy pigeon eye it looked kinda creepy. He’d clean his little pigeon face in his water bowl. He’d preen my hand when he was happy, he’d wingslap me when he wasn’t. I put him outside with the carrier open every single day thinking he would fly off but most of the time he just sat on top of the carrier or poked around in the grass. The few times he did fly off he came back, until one day he didn’t. I like to think he flew to some other sucker who would give him more ramen and less bird food.
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Best story ever.
