A Little Birdie Told Me

One of my favorite aspects of human nature is our creativity and love for anthropomorphizing the animals we see in our daily lives. If you listen closely enough to people as they pass by a squirrel or someone walking their dog, you’ll get to hear a snippet of the complex worlds they create to give those animals a story. Children have an especially vivid imagination when constructing the lives of the animals they see and interact with, and I have frequently witnessed a little kid point at a puppy nearby and confidently exclaim exactly where they think that puppy is going. We, as humans, ascribe emotions to animals, even though they don’t express emotions in a way we can recognize. We give them complex lives and assume they have complex relationships with other animals around them, we want to become their friends and learn about their hobbies. 

Birds in particular are interesting subjects of our creativity. Their faces tell us so little about their thoughts and motivations and we see them for such short periods of time before they fly away, but we still give them lives and personalities when we can. I wanted to see what the people in my life might see in a simple video of some pigeons, so I sent a handful of friends this short video and asked them to come up with whatever story first came to mind. Each of the stories is unique and, interestingly, not everyone agreed on whether there were just two distinct birds shown in the video or three. Before reading what my friends came up with, feel free to think about what their story is through your eyes. 

Leila:

Harriet sits on the windowsill, absolutely mortified. She has just told her childhood best friend that she has romantic feelings for him. Her best friend, Simon, sits uncomfortably on the wire nearby. Simon has never seen Harriet as anything more than a sister, and he wasn’t able to reciprocate Harriet’s feelings the way she thought he would. The two of them have been misunderstanding signals from each other for years now, and they both feel like their friendship will be completely ruined by this. 

Harriet is heartbroken, frozen staring off into the distance as she contemplates what this means for her and Simon. All she wants is to have Simon in her life, even just as friends, as this rejection was so bad and so awkward that she’s worried she may have just irreparably destroyed their relationship. She is desperately hoping that Simon wants to try to maintain a friendship even after this, but she’s too scared to ask. What Harriet probably can’t imagine right now in her deep heartbreak and embarrassment is that she and Simon are meant to end up together. Right now, as awkward young adults, neither of them have been great at communicating their feelings, but as they grow up a bit, they’ll look back on this day and laugh while they celebrate their first Christmas as a married couple. 

Krystle:

“Dude, go up to her,” Josh whispered to Jake, his fellow pigeon, who sat on a wire cable about a foot below him. Across the way sat one of the most beautiful birds they had ever seen. The curve of her beak, the light in her eyes--everything about her was breathtaking. She was unlike the other New York City pigeons. She looked too good for the city.

“No you do it,” Jake hissed back. Although he shared the same thoughts as Josh, he couldn’t bring himself to fly over to her window sill. He was suddenly self-conscious and knew he smelled like the pizza he found on the sidewalk that morning. 

“I’ll go over there if you go with me,” Josh said without taking his eyes off the lady pigeon.

“Deal. Just give me a minute,” Jake swallowed. His feathers were sweaty and his feet were starting to shake. Meanwhile, Josh started grooming himself, hoping to hide away the rougher feathers and flick off the crumbs from breakfast. 

“Wait!” Josh exclaimed. “What do we say to her!”

“Okay…” Jake thinks to himself. “You start with ‘hi,’ and after she says ‘hi’ I’ll say ‘how has your day been, beautiful lady?’”

“Jake, you’re being too straightforward. We should do this instead....”

After minutes of planning and practice, Jake and Josh straightened their backs and prepared to take off. But seconds turned to minutes and they kept finding themselves at the same spots as where they started. By then, they had both broken out into a nervous sweat.

“Dude, go up to her,” Josh cleared his throat. 

“No, you do it.”

Lauren:

Patrick sits on a wire, relaxed, sleepy, full after just eating a fantastic meal. He’s closing in on a food coma, dozing off here on the wire as the sun warms his feathers. 

Silently, sitting so perfectly behind Patrick, is world-class spy and assassin Sherlock Homie. Sherlock is remarkably un-legendary, known by virtually no one, just as the perfect spy should be. He’s a sight to behold when he’s on a job, but no one gets a chance to behold him, not even his victims. He likes to think of himself as a sort of Robin Hood character, but the truth is he’s ruthless and will do almost anything if he is paid enough, and he’ll do it well.

Sherlock is ready for action. He has steeled his nerves, put himself in the headspace to be completely silent, to move so precisely that he becomes almost invisible in Patrick’s shadow. This is an important job for Sherlock, and if he messes up he will be put on the map in precisely the wrong way. Luckily for him, Patrick’s recent meal has lowered his guard so much that he can’t even fathom that these moments dozing off on a wire in a comfortable patch of sun will be his very last.

Sean:

Dimitri the pigeon sits on a windowsill above his colleague. A knuckle duster for the Russian mob, Dimitri has a wife and three children, but is engaged in an extramarital affair. He’s a notoriously bad father, and his obsession with cryptocurrency causes him a lot of frustration that usually gets taken out on his kids. 

Below, sitting on a wire, is our second Dimitri. He had a traumatic childhood, and though his parents were terrible he still heavily felt the loss of their premature deaths and carries the guilt of not being able to protect his younger brother from the terrors of their upbringings. After meeting our first Dimitri, he got caught up in the mafia as a favor to his new friend.

The two colleagues are guarding an important mafia safe house. After a long night of nothing much happening, they’ve lowered their guard and have drunk enough to just barely break through their high tolerances. 

“So how’s the wife and kids?”

“Same old, same old. My youngest tried to punch me yesterday but missed. Form was sloppy, so I had to teach him what a real punch looks like. Gave him a few good demonstrations then had him practice on his brother.”

“And the wife?”

“Don’t get me started with her. You think she’d be grateful for what I bring home in crypto but now she’s accusing me of cheating and started talking about ‘stupid scamcoin’ and whatever else. Gave me all this crap about honor and faithfulness.”

Tatiana, a young, attractive spy, sits on a ledge across the way. She was kidnapped by the mafia at a young age and has been forced to work for them her whole life. Recently, she managed to trick one of the mob leaders and fight her way to freedom and is now using his stuff as a disguise. She’s looking for her family, hoping to reunite with her elderly mother, and just needs to get past these last two guards.

“Hey, is that the boss over there?”

“Oh… sober up quick, and hide the bottles.”

Tatiana is frozen, staring at these two as she decides what her next move should be. 

“So uh, hey boss, how’s it going… need us to deal with someone for you?” the younger Dimitri shouts awkwardly loud.

There is no response. Tatiana breathes heavily as panic sets in.

“I don’t understand how a freak like that got so high up the ladder here,” the older bird mutters.

“Didn’t you hear what he did last week? Apparently, he caught his target by surprise at a JC Penny’s and made him pick a number between one and ten. The guy chose five, so boss cut off five of his fingers, five toes, and knocked out five teeth.”

“He’s insane.”

“He lost himself in the moment but apparently he apologized after and sent a get well soon card, so I guess they’re cool now… We should probably try to wave at him so he doesn’t think we’re disrespecting him.”

As the Dimitri’s send their frantic little waves across the street, they see the other bird abruptly fly off as if desperate to get somewhere.

“Good, he’s gone now. Ay pull the bottle back out, and let’s have a toast. A toast to Dimitri, our crazy boss.”

Aline:

The pigeon on the window is starving. They haven’t eaten anything all morning and it was a long flight all the way up onto this 5th-floor windowsill. Looking down at the pigeon in front of them, they start to get an almost unbearable craving for a strawberry cheese danish. This craving is not random, as they know the pigeon sitting in front of them on the wire. That’s the child of the pigeon who owns the famous Crust and Crumble Pigeon Bakery nearby, where birds can get the best strawberry cheese danishes in town. The craving quickly turns into anger as the pigeon remembers, this pigeon on the wire in front of them ate the bakery’s last strawberry cheese danish today. These are birds though, so the anger goes away almost as quickly as it sprung up, and the pigeon decides to change their plans and fly over to the Sprinkle’s Pigeon Cupcakes and pick up a red velvet cupcake to fulfill their sweet tooth instead.

Logan:

“The rock pigeon. A majestic species often overlooked and considered a pest- quite a shame. Yet, as humans, we have never been able to fully realize why these birds are so fascinating. That ends today, as with the power of technology we can now use Google Translate to turn their complex language system of cooing into poetic wisdoms fit for any human philosophy textbook. I am your narrator and guide, and it is now time for us to delve deeper into the thoughts of these two amazing animals before us.”

---

“Phil, how long have we been sitting here?”

“About 5 hours, Joe, give or take.”

“Damn… are we expecting something to happen? Why are we here?”

“I mean, what else would you rather do? Get trampled trying to eat that burrito in the street below us or get beat up by the rabid cats in the alleyways?”

“Fair enough.”

“Hey, if you’re so bored, I’ll get you dinner tonight if you can crap on that guy’s head down there, dead center.”

“Alright, bet, easy.” There was not much confidence in Joe’s voice as he said this, and he settled in to prepare.

About a minute later, Phil was fed up. “Dude, why haven’t you dropped the bomb yet?”

“Hey man, it takes me a little bit to… you know… get ready.” Joe tried to hide his face as he said this.

“If it was me, it’d be out in an instant.”

“Okay, first of all, there is no way that’s healthy. Please go see a doctor. Also, if you could really do it so easily you should’ve shown me up by now.” Phil went silent. “That’s what I thought.”

“Okay, but seriously, you gotta hurry up. The target’s approaching fast.” As Phil speaks, Joe launches off the wire and leaves Phil standing alone on the building. 

Joe returns, doing wing-finger guns victoriously as the sound of complaining humans begins down below. “Still got it.”

“... you weird me out sometimes, you know that?”

---

“Wow, 10 years of research and development went into this software, and we finally have our first footage. This has been an incredibly authentic, and I hope most would say interesting, look into the world of the birds we share our cities with. Now, it seems as though I need to go buy a new hat.”

The day I went out to film the birds in this video, I came home with almost 10 full minutes worth of footage of various pigeons hopping around, staring straight into my camera, or flitting between the branches of the street trees. I could have spent hours with each of my friends coming up with hundreds of little universes for each of the birds I saw in just a short period of time, but no one I spoke to said they ever think so deeply about animals and their stories in their normal lives. The process of putting together these stories has taught me how much fun it is to indulge your creativity every once in a while. At the very least, it’s just a purely wholesome and uplifting way to spend some extra time, but it can also teach you something about yourself or give you a reason to reconnect with your inner child and play pretend for a bit.