I dropped into my local Au Bon Pain in Davis Square a couple days ago.  I found a free table and was reading a little of Michael Ignatieff's brilliant and beautifully written The Needs of Strangers among strangers, as seemed fitting, when a woman on the other side of middle age in a prairie dress who looked as if she'd just escaped from a polygamist sect burst in clutching something to her breast.

It turned out to be a pigeon.  The woman was a bird-whisperer, apparently.  I'm not sure what brought her into the restaurant, but soon the manager showed up to ask her to please take the bird back outside.  The woman clutching the pigeon looked pained, and implored the manager to lower her voice.  So as not to offend the bird, I guess.  The manager explained it was nothing personal against the bird, it's just a violation of the health code.

The Bird Whisperer huffed out all offended. 

Seems urbanites have always been divided in their opinions of pigeons.  And it may not always seem clear where someone falls on the issue.  I mean, look at London's Mayor Ken Linvingstone, a Socialist.  You would think socialists would be in the pigeon camp, but Livingstone waged an all-out war on the beasts in the early noughties, focusing his ire on the overfed hordes in Trafalgar Square.

His plan to cull the population through poison feed sparked a veritable civil war.  On the one side were those who acknowledged that the birds were carriers of flu, TB and Lyme disease.  On the other were those who believed Britain owed a debt to the species for their service as carriers of vital information to and from the front in the two World Wars.  One side sees them as "rats with wings."  To the other they're nothing less than "the race horses of the sky."

Whatever your opinion, even pigeon "fanciers," as they're sometimes called, make a distinction between thoroughbreds and the commoner kinds you find in city squares.  Even fanciers rationalize their fancy by referring to the intelligence or usefulness of the birds.  But how do public park bench warmers with their bags of stale bread justify their hobby?

There is a mystery in the feeding of pigeons in public parks.  It only seems to make sense to us because we've grown used to seeing people do it.  In reality it makes no sense to go out of your way to feed something that would shit on you without thinking twice, does it?  Or to let something with no real bowel control perch on your head, as people do regularly in Trafalgar Square.   

Is it some inexplicable altruism on our part?  Maybe some primal debt owed to these creatures that moves so many of us to encourage their numbers where the pigeon population is already clearly out of control?  Or is it an equally human attraction to the particular sort of vileness pigeons in hordes (sometimes called a "mischief," which is not nearly sinister enough for my taste) represent?   

It could be the seemingly infinite capacity for anthropomorphism people seem to have.  Birds are intriguingly like tiny people in bird suits, I'll admit.  Particularly if you happen to be high on prescription medication, which I get the feeling many park bench pigeon feeders are.  And it is fun to have a feeding frenzy at your fingertips.  I get that.  I mean, where else but on a park bench can you feel like a god who can spark tiny riots with nothing but a bag of stale bread or the crumbs from a bag of chips at your disposal? 

To watch a bird riot unfold over a scant bit of moldy roll can be exhilarating somehow, I suppose.  There's drama.  There's sex and violence.  Survival of the fittest.  And something about an orgy of viciousness and greed taking place right under our noses over nothing more than a stale pretzel seems to speak of some terrible primordial truth all sentient creatures are forced to acknowledge at some point.  Once the horde has descended and the riot begins it's hard to look away.

But only the dispossessed could bond with the creatures en masse.  It's not, let's say self-evident to sympathize with hordes of anything, especially vermin.  But humans are peculiar in their attraction to that which should by all means repel and repulse them.  We are also uniquely ironic among the creatures of the earth, and there is something about scavengers begging for scraps and then shitting them back on us that seems to embody another otherwise inexpressible truth of existence. 
 
And even the hardest-hearted among us is not immune to the fleeting charms of the lone pigeon every now and again.  As I sat in the sun in the square yesterday with a cup of coffee and my book, one scuttled up at my feet.  There was a stray pretzel on the ground there in front of me, and the little fellow set to work on it, gingerly at first, but then with gusto.  Sad to say, as valiant as its efforts were, the pretzel must have been hard as a rock, because he wasn't making any progress that I could see.

After a while it went from poignant to pathetic.  These pigeons are too pampered.  I got up and stepped on the pretzel, crushing it out of the kindness of my heart, so that the little guy could get some crumbs out of it and be on his way.  I couldn't tell whether he was appreciative or not.  He didn't have much time to be.  He was only able to get a morsel or two before a butchier pigeon descended with a PHWOOMPH! and horned in on the little guy's lunch.

At first I felt sorry for the little one, but I noticed that the big one didn't seem to be as picky.  He gobbled up the crumbs with real gusto.  The other one stood his ground for a moment, and then after a surprise headbutt an invigorating little scuffle ensued.  Their necks entwined, the big one pushed the little one all around the square with his puffed-up chest, while the little one frantically tried to get a shot with his beak at the big one's eye. 

Unfortunately, while they were thus engaged in their shoving match, about a hundred and fifty other pigeons descended on the crushed pretzel and inside of three seconds it was gone, and they were scurrying after the one with the biggest crumb.  And then, as suddenly as they'd appeared, they were off, their clapping wings punctuating their mass exit with a kind of applause.

Now, that's entertainment.