The Great Pigeon Caper

I have always been a lover of birds and fowl. The sound and movement of them has always fascinated me. The sight and sound of them in a pasture, a woodlot or in my backyard cannot help but cheer me up.

Before I get to the pigeon fiasco, I will relate a couple of recent events that I found amusing. On the first day of spring last year (2011) my Holly shrubs were loaded with a bumper crop of red berries. At about three o’clock in the afternoon these shrubs were ravaged by a large flock of cedar waxwings. Shortly they had devoured every berry in sight. I felt lucky to witness this sight as I hardly ever saw a cedar waxwing in my yard or gardens. I made a mental note to myself to be on the alert for this event to occur again this spring. However on Super Bowl Sunday, while watching the Patriots lose to those dastardly bullies from New York, I was distracted by a flurry of activity in my window boxes. A flock of robins was busy eating the red berries that I had put there with evergreen cuttings. From there they preceded to strip all the red berries off the Holly bushes. This was interesting to me for several reasons. One being they were flocked up, I don’t recall ever seeing robins do that. The second being there is always a few hearty robins that winter over, even in the harshest winters. But this was a large amount of robins to be here in early February. They were probably auguring a mild winter. I don’t think one mild winter is a sign of things to come. We have experienced them before. Only to be followed by a string of winters that only made the snow plower’s and OPEC happy. My son Joe chided me saying, are you going to stand there looking out the window or are you going to watch the game. So I went back to the agony of defeat. But in the back of my mind was the feeling that as the cedar waxwings migrated north this spring they were going to be disappointed when they stopped here for lunch.

On a rainy March 25th afternoon I noticed a lonely cedar waxwing hopping along on the ground near my holly bushes. After he discerned that there were no berries there, he checked out the feeders, shook his head and flew away. I’m sure he was the advance scout and returned to the flock with the bad news.

But I feel lucky to have seen the scouting wax wing and look forward to see who gets the berries next year.

Before, I relate the pigeon caper. I would like to say the commonly held belief that birds evolved from dinosaurs is a myth. It’s a little like believing in jackalopes.

Ever year in early spring, dating back to when I was a little kid I have always had the urge to raise poultry and grow things. Over the years I have done both, many times.

So when I was about fourteen I found out that the Beck’s who lived on what is now known as Shore Terrace near Ober Park in Ryal side were raising racing pigeons I was intrigued.

This particular winter/early spring,Victor Bernson, Richard Locke and I were hanging around together. This was odd because the three of us had nothing in

common. We usually hung around with different crowds. But somehow I convinced them that we should try our hand at raising racing pigeons ourselves. So we went to visit the Beck’s and view their loft (fancy name for a pigeon coop) At that time this area was mostly seasonal summer homes. And the ones that were converted to year round homes could only be classified as seedy. The male Beck’s could only be best described as gaunt and scruffy. But the loft was impressive and immaculate. The family patriarch was very proud of his birds and ran on at great length about the care of the birds and the strategy he used to win races. But what impressed me the most was how he could hold a cigarette in his mouth and talk non stop with out the ash falling off, and how expensive racing pigeons were.

 After checking with the local pigeon racing club, what the Beck’s had told us

was true.If we really scrimped we might have been able to buy one pair of racing pigeons. And hope that they mated and gave us a future brood of potential champions. Of course that was not the instant satisfaction that we were looking for. So we decided we were just going to have to find a better way to get into the game. The Thibedeau’s had a couple of empty chicken coops in the back yard and we decided we would use one as our loft.

So our plan was to wait until it got dark. Then we would go under the Kernwood Bridge and capture the common pigeons that roosted there. The first night, we only brought one gunny sack and captured four birds. The next night we decided we needed it least twelve more birds, so we each brought a gunny sack. The night was unseasonably cold and there was a little sleet falling. On our way to the bridge we all smoked a cigar. Smoking was something we were just starting to experiment with at that age. Richard some how always had cigars and his favorite cigarettes Old Gold filter kings. I never questioned where he got them. But he like the rest of us kids certainly did not have any money. I do recall that it was easy for kids to buy tobacco products, and there were cigarette vending machines everywhere. You would put two dimes in the machine and get a pack with two cents change taped to it. I know I digress but old man Beck’s smoking oddity reminded me of this.

When we got to the bridge it was a real dark night, the wind was howling and it was drizzling. I went under the bridge first and Victor and Richard followed. We were successfully grabbing pigeons when from above someone yelled “Hey what are you guys doing down there”. Now of course there were no-trespassing signs on the bridge, but we never expected the bridge tender to be there at night. We started running towards the ladder on the Beverly side of the bridge. Victor and Richard made it up, but I slipped on the icy creosoted deck and went head first into the river. Fortunately for me the tide was coming in and it was a short distance to the shore. I got out of the river and raced for home. The heavy wool mackinaw and leather brogans I had on felt like they weighed a hundred pounds. I took the short cut through the woods but it still took me about fifteen minutes to get home. We always went through the bulkhead into the basement to take off our muddy boots or shoes before going upstairs. At this time of the night there was no one else down there. There was a big washing machine down there and hampers for the dirty clothes., so I was able to find some of my dirty clothes to change into and hang the sopping wet cloths to dry. I then stood near the furnace to warm up and thanked my lucky stars that I was able to get in and change with out Mrs. Thibedeau seeing me, or there would have been hell to pay. About an hour later just as I was getting warm the bulkhead door open up and Victor and Richard came down into the basement. I was just getting ready to tell them about my adventure when Victor came over and punched me in the face and it knocked me on my ass. As it turns out they did not see me get out of the river and they were afraid I had drowned. I think they were more afraid of explaining why they were there and what happened. Then they were about me.

Any way we ended up with a flock of common pigeons. We kept them cooped up, watered and feed for about two weeks. The experienced birders would let their birds out for exercise every evening, and before it got dark they would return to the coop. So we figured two weeks was long enough for our birds to adapt to their new home and would return if we let them out for some exercise. Well we let them out and they flew straight back to the Kernwood Bridge area and we never saw them again. Needless to say that was the end of our pigeon raising and from there we all went our separate ways.