They met regularly in a secret bell tower in the city of Chicago, a city so hazardous and inhospitable to Pigeonkind that it not only completely banned Pigeon keeping, feeding, racing and fancying, but it employed some of the more aggressive anti-Pigeon operations seen in the United States.
Members of the Pro-Life Pigeon League were all a-flutter on this chilly November day, mostly on account of the myths that the Blue Scare were muddling up into the facts. They discussed their usual business with a dash of urgency, a hint of azure.
“As we make progress toward our critical mass,” said Harvey to the gathering, “we need to keep in mind the ancestry of our choices. In order to stay strong in these coming times, we need to stay present to the many leagues of Rock Dove that have gone before. They knew these ways, and we are connecting with them in our blood, in our sacred choosing, in our return to Martha’s way, the ancient way. In their wingspans do we fly.”
Harvey was a bird who brushed up on her oratory skills every time she flew to the Capitol, where she was the main liason from Central Squabland. There she filled up on rhetoric like a hummingbird on nectar. Thus she was nearly always chosen to open meetings, and she did so with fanfare. A wave of bobbing Pigeon heads passed the tower from perch to perch. [1]
Martha was commonly invoked in these meetings. The Last Passenger Pigeon, the final member of the extinct clan whose ways were widely considered superior to those of modern adaptation-minded Pigeons. “Common Pigeons,” they were called among breeders and racers alike. Sometimes they were referred to as “Wild Ones” or “Feral” or “City Birds.” A little update: in modern times, no matter how sheltered, no matter how intentionally controlled their bloodline, all Pigeons were adapted birds. They had learned ways to survive a world ruthlessly dominated by the human species. Some, like Racing Homers and Fancy Breeds, survived through a reinforced sense of superiority. Others survived through a prideless cohabitation with those who displaced them.
No one was arguing that there was not a marked difference between the carefully-bred Homers and the willy-nilly Rock Doves of the city. But since the origins of Livia’s Tower, since the early days of the Pro-Life Pigeon League, the city birds and feral racers alike were getting educated together. They knew they all came from the same original stock, and they shared a common ancestry. Cross-bred with the hallowed White Dove in Sumeria some three-thousand years before the birth of the Christians’ Christ, they had long been adopted into the family of heroic odyssey. Somewhere along the line, an artificial social distinction was made in order to match projection with perception. The distopian inventions of class and race were anthropomorphically applied to the widely diverse bird family. Unbelievable, untenable human standards were shackled round the little twig-legs, and the flock was divided. One single breed, not surprisingly a white one, was singled out to represent the Holy Spirit. The rest were cast aside. Indeed, a whole race of them had already been wiped out: the pastoral, innocent, naïve, plentiful Passengers. Much of the Squabland diaspora that remained had been disconnected and dissociated for decades. But no longer. Here, in the PLPL, they could come together, for the future of their little squeakers and their squeakers’ squeakers! In the PLPL, they were able to share the skills of their widely variant evolutionary adaptations, together choosing the consensual upgrades that would create an empowered future, an exalted Squabland where the natural brilliance and majesty of their nature would shine forth, untarnished and unlimited!
In order to appeal to the variety of cognitive abilities in the bunch [2], they reviewed this material in every meeting.
“Our first line of defense, brethren, is to proliferate as widely and quickly as possible, while keeping our growing numbers safe. This way, our predators can’t possibly make a dent in our populations, can’t affect the great soul of our people. And those lost will only come back stronger. So sayeth the promise of the All-Bird.”
A murmured couping purred through the crowd as the lot of them paid their respected to their Sovereign. As the sound rose into a veritable organ hum, members of the flock trembled and flapped and cried out, gone static electric with the collective resonance.
“Stuff ‘em silly, and they’ll quit before they make it through the appetizers!” called out one respected old Roller from Chicago, squeaking through his statue-sharpened beak.
“They won’t even make it through our front lines! Let’s see ‘em take on all the Pigeon nations united as one! They’ll die trying!” shrieked a young Parlour Roller raised in Livia’s tower.
“We’ve been coming back since before there was such a thing as a comeback”
A chant started vaguely in the West corner: “Com-ing BACK! Com-ing BACK!”
The tone was set. The pulse heightened, the flock warm. Navigating the GPS-minds to the heart of the mission at hand, Harvey asked Karl to give them a brief overview of their campaign basics.
“Allright, y’all, listen up! I want to see one eye from each of ya,” called out Karl, ever the popular rabble-rouser among the Chicago lofts. Karl was descended from a pair of Manchester Rollers who flew the coop for freedom before he was nested. After his parents were killed in a tragic municipal poisoning, Karl grew up a lone fancy feral among city birds. He sported a well-honed charismatic combo of a no-bullshit-or-I’ll-slice-ya street presence, a joyful ease with the whimsical talents of all Roller Pigeons [3], and a sense of humor providing enough room for the fullness of that spectrum in one bird. “So, remember why we’re in this: this here’s a freedom fight for our kind. Ain’t gonna study this war no more. This is about planetary survival! No longer will we be divided and conquered. No longer will we perpetuate the values of the colonizer. No longer will we be segregated into ‘White Doves’ and ‘Racing Homers,’ ‘Fancy Breeds’ and ‘Street-Rat Vermin!’”
A ripple went through the feathers upon the utterance of the V-word. Personally, Karl liked to tousle those feathers, so he gave his wings a good flap or two and continued on.
“This kind of segregation is how we lost our Passengers, it’s true, and Flo can say more about that in our History and Current Events portion of the evening.” He winked an orange saucer in Florence’s direction. “But I’m here to remind y’all of why we’re here, WHY we gather like this. We are working for a Superbreed here, and that kind of evolutionary leap don’t come overnight.”
“That’s right!”
“It won’t come without a fight!”
“Sing it, brother!”
Karl continued, “As it’s been told, we Pigeonfolk have been meeting like this since Martha passed the Great Note [4] and our Benefactress delivered the Prophecy. We are slowly, but surely, taking responsibility for our own people, our own ways, our own role in this evolutionary uprising. And we are circling back around for those still lost; no one is left behind. We are steady infiltrating the ranks of those whose brains were washed, those who will get squashed on a one-way street just trying to grab a moldy chunk of hotdog bun.”
Wings flapped in syncopated agitation. Squawks from the many Chicago birds who had lost family members in this way.
“They’ve asserted control over our numbers as well as our perches. They’ve massacred a royal family and its whole nomadic kind. And who are they? Just big ole chickens, trying to rule the roost. Well, we see their trembling wattles. They got their flailing talons and fumbly tactics, we got our wits and wings! They got their machines and menaces, we got our networks, our communities, our dauntless courage, our very way of life! They try and try to take us down, but we’re on the rise, Squabland!”
“We’re on the rise! Let them chickens run!”
“Poor confused idiots,” clucked a loud Trumpeter from the Southside. “The fool-ass folks trying to kill us don’t even know they need us! They need every last one of us to keep this ship from going down!”
“That’s right, Bokhara. We got this! Let’s keep those numbers growing!”
“Nest up, homies! Make it count!”
“That’s right, my friends. We will let any perceived threat to our populations serve to further galvanize us to fulfill our mission. I ask you, why would there be so many of us at this time, why would we have been given the tools & skills, the motivation & follow-through, if we weren’t all necessary for what is coming through on this planet? The humans may be the last fools to see it, but they’ll see it all right. It’s gonna take all of us, together, to pull this thing off. Together we rise. Coup! Coup! Coup!”
“Coup! Cooooup! Cooooup!”
“Coup! Cooooooooup!”
“Cooooooooooup!”
The storm of Pigeon sounds lasted for a long glorious moment, filling the air and bobbing the heads. Karl puffed out his chest just a tiny bit as he strode back to his perch. It was good to be among friends.
-**
1. More than the usual bobbing, that is.
2. Colloquially called “Bird Brain” in human circles.
3. Realtalk: one of Karl’s relatives shown here.
4. So the story goes in Squabland: in the zoo cage that held her death, Martha had sent word to the monkeyhouse for a note to be written, a note that would be carried via Homer until the right time & place for its delivery. (The Rev. contended that it was his great, great, great, great grandmother who was that Homer. However, in many circles it was well-known that this Homer was Martha’s last lover. So talk amongst yourselves.) Of the humanfolk, only Livia knew this sacred story of Birdland. Because it was Livia who found the Homer. Or rather, it was Livia the Homer found. In any case, the note it carried, the note dictated by Martha from her deathnest, the note now referred to as the Great Note, said simply this: -**