Columbiformed

I'm having murderous thoughts. Evil, cruel, malicious intentions are occupying the front seats of my mind right now. I have an itching desire to evict squatters from our flat, not unlike the cruel landlord in the story who turned out the hapless widow with her little baby in a snowstorm in the middle of the night. Did he feel guilty, did his conscience bother him at all, did he suffer from nightmares and did he drown his sorrows in drink every time it snows? I’ll never know; but one thing I know for sure is I wouldn’t be feeling guilty at all, it never snows here anyway, and the nightmares I can only hope never occur.

Said squatters being a pigeon family who had taken up residence on top of our empty cardboard boxes in a corner of a shelf in our kitchen. Birds in the kitchen? I hear you cry in disgust. Well you haven’t seen our kitchen. It’s not a big kitchen, but the place where the pigeons hung up their socks is right next to the door so it is almost like they never come inside the house. Fly in the door, land on your very own bird-doorstep, do whatever it is that birds do all day, fly out when hungry, make noises and when someone peeps at you get all jumpy and startled like you've never seen humans before and you're just dropping in for a chat. When they first deposited their luggage we didn’t mind much, and when they laid two eggs we were quite excited, checking it every other day to see if they’d hatched. It was all downhill from there. The eggs hatched, and two little ugly chicks were born. They sure were ugly, and for some reason one of them was not quite developed as the other and I think the parents kind of rejected it because it kept on falling down on the floor and we tossed it back up numerous times. It’s not exactly the nicest surprise, I'm telling you, when you are standing there in the kitchen doing whatever it is humans do in the kitchen when something soft and furry and heavy suddenly attaches itself on your shoulder. If you're the jumpy panicky type you would've screamed your lungs out, or told it to everyone so that by the time the fifth person hears about it it would've been a bat trying to suck your blood, or something equally gross and unbelievable.

Following Darwin’s theory of Survival of the Fittest, the weak chick died ( and we thought they were stupid and well, birdbrained), I don’t know about the funeral arrangements but one day I peeped into the villa and it was no longer there. I was a bit miffed for not being invited to the funeral service. I could’ve said something nice. The other chick is all grown up now, but not yet quite as big as its parents, and still lives in the nest, and the mother has just delivered a new set of siblings-to-be. I saw the older brother yesterday strutting among the broken things and the cardboard boxes as if it was his kingdom. I don’t mind the strutting, the startling and squawking, the watching you suspiciously from the balcony, or the lovemaking noises. What I absolutely cannot stand is the flying over your head without any warning, dirtying the floor with poop, the kicking down pieces of concrete and straw from your bedroom, and the bad reputation we as flatmates have acquired for having you share our flat and you don’t even contribute to the rent or maintenance. With so much generosity and benevolence shown from our side, can’t you at least act like civilized birds and keep your nest and its surroundings neat and tidy?

Dear reader, I hope you will now see my side of the coin and forgive me for all these unkind and nasty thoughts that are festering in me, and if the day ever comes when I turn the cruel landlord I hope you’ll pronounce me “Not Guilty.”