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| The Birds of Lincoln Heights |
There is an elderly man in my neighborhood who loves to feed birds. My girlfriend and I call him Mr. Tom because he is not much of a talker and "Tom" is pretty much what we could get out of him.
Every morning, at around 7:00 AM, Mr. Tom drives one of his two Cadillac to the small "park" in the middle of our street. I say "park" because it is more like an island of grass with a few palm trees, benches, and a sandbox. Mr. Tom only lives a few houses away from this island of grass and sand, but he needs the car to transport the huge sacks of bird seed that he unloads from the trunk of his car.
After Mr. Tom has unloaded the seed sacks, he drags them to the sandbox, opens them, dumps them, and then carefully proceeds to rake the seeds into the sand. He is very systematic and serious about this process. Once, our dog ran into the sandbox while Mr. Tom was raking, and he got terribly bothered, as if someone had just ruined a masterpiece he was creating. All we could do was apologize profusely and try to explain to our dear little dog that the park and the sandbox were off limits in the early mornings.
I don't know why Mr. Tom does what he does. I imagine the cost of feeding so many pigeons on a regular basis costs a pretty penny. Whatever his reasons, his daily ritual does make for an interesting sky. I call our block The Pigeon Capital of Los Angeles. Often when I leave for work in the mornings, there are dozens of birds perched on telephone wires and more dozens circling the sky. It's reminiscent of Hitchcock's The Birds, which is one of my favorite movies, so I don't much mind the ominous quality of having so many birds looming.
The downfall, though, is all the bird shit. Few on the block escape it. Depending on where you park or which way the wind blew that particular morning, our cars may or may not get plastered. I used to get angry when my car got bombed, but I've now come to accept it as just a part of living on this street. It's a pain to have to be wiping bird shit on a regular basis, but I admire Mr. Tom's devotion way too much to complain or ask him to stop. Maybe it's what keeps him alive or feeds his happiness. It definitely keeps the birds happy. And despite the inconvenience, I cannot deny how spectacular the sky looks when so many pigeons are flying in choreographed circles, swooping down to the sandbox and then back up into the sky.
While I lived in Hawai'i, there was also a 'pigeon man' who I would see on campus every single day. In addition to pigeons, there was also a decently large population of feral cats on that campus. The cats' benefactors were at least two 'cat ladies' who would bring big bags of cat food to campus at night. I have heard the phrase 'cat herding' being used to describe a futile effort, but these ladies seemed to do a fine job of herding up to 40 (I counted) feral cats into a given area with their bags of cat food. Though a bunch of cats swarming a parking lot in the middle of the night is probably not nearly as picturesque as birds flying through the clear morning sky.
ReplyDeleteYes, I know how hard and mad it is when you see a lot of birds shit stick on your car. But just like you said, maybe feeding pigeons is the only way for Mr. Tom to get away from solitude and unhappiness. You know, in China, it is rarely to see a lot of birds flying around in the sky in cities. If you wanna get a photo with pigeon as you feed them, you have to pay the seed and then you are allowed to get close to someone's pigeons. So seeing a lot of birds circling around is perhaps a good view if you can think it in another way.
ReplyDeleteBirds shit is good luck, or so we say in Argentina. So I hope you are a very lucky girl!
ReplyDelete