At one point during the colder months I began to keep score with the pigeons. Quite a few places have structures to deter pigeons and other birds from building nests. On the covered entrance portion of the White Plains station, there are metallic looking spikes that serve this purpose. But the pigeons have maneuvered through them and began nesting anyways. While waiting for my bus in the icy rain, I saw a pigeon fly to a nearby bush, break off a twig, secure that twig in its beak, and then fly back to the nest. This pigeon could have won prizes for endurance. I seriously saw him do this about a million times, and he was still doing it while I got on the bus. For outsmarting the humans who tried to deter birds from building a nest? Pigeons: 1, Humans: 0.

The next day, I found myself sitting on the shuttle looking out the window. Recalling the previous day’s pigeon outsmarting humans event, I noticed that the humans had tied the game. A pigeon had gotten run over by a Bee Line bus… with wings completely outstreched, desperately trying to make it away in time. Failing. And becoming a pigeon pancake.

Alright, so from all my posts about pigeons, you may think that I have a little bit of a thing for them. Not really. They are just amusing animals. Something about the way they bob their heads back and forth… which they do even faster and in an even more amusing way when you just happen to be chasing them. And with little kids, and little idiots (like myself), it is a much more likely scenario to see a human chasing a pigeon. But one incredibly amusing day, I definitely saw the opposite. I have a coworker that apparently has a phobia of pigeons. He normally doesn’t take the train from White Plains, he takes the bus to Stamford to pick up a New Haven line train… so he doesn’t normally hang out in the White Plains train station with my friends and I. On this fateful day however, he had to go to the bathroom. Unfortunately, the upstairs hallway on the way to the bathrooms was being patrolled by a pigeon looking for handouts. My coworker cowered against the wall, and pointed to the pigeon. Another coworker said “Oh just go by him, he won’t do nothin’ to ya…” And so he timidly stepped forward… and the pigeon launched into the air, and flew straight at him. In truly hilarious fashion, he screamed, and ran the rest of the way to the bathroom, as fast as he could. He may be ridiculed about this day from now until the end of time.