Where’s The Hidden Camera?
Posted By Kristabella on July 28, 2011
You guys will never believe what happened to me the other night as I was standing on the platform waiting for my train home.
As a bit of background, all our train stations are very proactive about keeping the pigeons away as best they can. There are barbed-wire like pointy things on any surface that a pigeon can land, for the most part. The CTA does their very best to keep you from getting pooped on while waiting for your train.
But the train platforms are outside and open. So pigeons can still fly in and hang out on the platform. And they will, looking for dropped scraps of food. But don’t feed them, there’s a $200 fine.
All this to say, they aren’t much of a nuisance. Until the other night. And then it became like a combination Birds-slash-Dr. Dolittle.
I was just minding my business, waiting for the next train. I saw a pigeon, ONE pigeon, on the platform looking around. Then all of a sudden four of them flew in from nowhere and the dude next to me was almost decapitated, since pigeons are stupid (although not as stupid as you’d think, seeing as they’ve learned to avoid the third rail) and this one flew right at the dude’s head.
Both of us decided it was best to move when we looked down and it was like feeding time at the zoo.
(There were at least five more than this. Swearsies.)
Now, let me point out that I’m waiting at one of, if not the, busiest platform on the system. Every single train line goes through this stop. It’s ALWAYS crowded. The passengers don’t have a place to hang out, let along the birds. So to see this many in one spot was weird. Add that to the fact that there are mutant animals in the book I’m reading, and I was readying myself for the locusts.
So I moved down and continued to check Twitter on my phone. The rats-with-wings stayed where they were. The Train Tracker said my train was approaching and it couldn’t come soon enough. I like my eyeballs and do not want them to get pecked out.
And that’s when it happened. I felt something. A painful pinch on my big toe. I looked down and one of those fucking birds was pecking at my toe. A PIGEON PECKED AT MY TOE!!!!
My foot odor problem must be worse than I thought if the garbage-eating birds thought my feet were food.
PECKED. MY. TOE.
Just when I figure my life can’t get any weirder.
About the author
While I hate pigeons, I seem to have the squirrel magnet. I can’t stand still near a park without being accosted by a damn squirrel. Who would have thought that it would be all wild kingdom in the big city.
oh my god.
I am terrified of birds. I would have died.
Did you punt it? I hate those things. They interbreed with doves in the suburbs here and we end up with these whiny, pink-legged white wing dove looking frankensteins.
I was at a farm supply yesterday (hey, i live in tx), and there was a foreign couple in there. The man was trying to explain to his wife how the raccoon trap would lure in the wild birds and trap them, then they could let them go somewhere else. “After all”, he said, “those nasty wild birds are eating all the food we put out for the pigeons!” *headdesk* I had to intervene. I may have been rather condescending about it, too. Oh well. He left without buying a trap, so maybe it was a small victory.
I soooo would have screeeemed
That gave me shivers. Birds are weird.