A Pigeon.

A dirty, unwanted, hazard-to-human-health bird.

I feel like humans simply aren’t capable of sharing space with animals that aren’t livestock or pets.

We move in and make the environment impossible to live in for 99% of the existing animal species.

Then, the few species that are hardy, clever, and stubborn enough to survive -or even thrive- in our altered environments are branded pests! Outlaws! And we kill them off when they become inconvenient or encroach too much on our space! Think rats, mice, pigeons, sea gulls, raccoons, skunks, foxes, ect.

Don’t get me wrong- I understand the reasons why. I myself am legendary among the roaches and mice of my apartment. I am the boogeyman that keeps thier young awake. I am become Death, the destroyer of pests.

I just find it sad that there really seems to be no cohabitating. Only (shrinking) separate spaces, and the wildlife prisons of farms and zoos.

You know when rare, find-it-hard-to-survive-in-our-altered-environment birds set up shop in a city, and we do so much to help them survive- and set up webcams and all that? I want to set up a webcam on a pigeon roost. I want to plant guerrilla gardens of “weeds”. I want to celebrate the unspecial, the commonplace- The dirty and determined. To earn our support, you have to be cute and/or frail- and also rare. I’m not rare, cute, or frail myself, and I respect animals that fight tooth and nail to carve out a niche- to survive. I still kill them when they eat and shit all up in my oatmeal, but I respect them.