Parable of the Uncoordinated Pigeon
By Lowell Uda
Text Copyright Lowell Uda 2012
Table of Contents
Parable of the Uncoordinated Pigeon
Brief Bio of the Author
Where to Find Lowell Uda Online
The Parable of the Uncoordinated Pigeon
One pigeon in the coop always had a red nose and bloody eyes. None of the other birds liked him, and they pecked at his big nose—which the boy who owned the pigeons called a “popcorn”—and tugged mercilessly at his lids, causing them to bleed.
“What a dummy,” said the boy. “King! Fight back! Hit!”
Encouraged, King snapped his wing, strangely, awkwardly, and pulled and tugged away from his assailants, who pulled and tugged him back.
“He’s good for nothing,” said the boy. “He won’t fight back.”
“Well, there’s something wrong with that bird, Bing,” laughed the boy’s father. “Maybe we should have him for supper.”
“All he does is gobble up the grain,” said the boy, “and slam around the coop.”
Tilting his head, King eyed the perch in the corner: he saw the perch clearly. But when King flapped his wings, he flew in the opposite direction than he had intended. Instead of hitting the perch with his feet, he smacked the floor with his head.
“Gosh!” the boy’s father winced. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Flying was always an experience for King, and he had to be launched. Otherwise he would sit where he was put. And when he was launched, he made a confounding spectacle of himself. Not only the high tension wires got in the way, but houses, people, the good earth itself. But the saddest time of all was when the young hens came of age. King cooed all right, manfully, filling his bright crop with air, his bloody yellow eyes wide and menacing; his tail swept admirably as he rushed “O-O-O-rooo! O-O-O-rooo!” across the floor, dancing the dance of war and love. But if King did not have to fight for the favor of the young hen (he always lost), and if by chance the young hen became enamored of King, and nestled herself down close to the floor, King, poor King, saw her broad back before him, but he leapt in the wrong direction. Instead of leaping onto the proffered back, he jumped into the water trough or the angry feedbox. King was a lonely bird, never mated.
One day there was a great flutter in the coop. The boy had climbed in, and he grabbed all the pigeons who weren’t nesting or tending squabs or uncoordinated and stuffed them into a cardboard box. The boy replenished the feed trough and went out. King walked quickly to the feed trough. His head down in the grain, King flicked the round hard peas and the flat hard corn deftly and rapidly into his gullet. The boy climbed suddenly back into the coop. With his hands outstretched the boy went after King, and King scampered away—right into the boy’s hands.
The ride was long and hot, and in the cardboard box all the birds were irritable. In the light from the small holes, King saw an eye or a beak, or the bars or checks on a wing, and every once in a while he saw a shadow move close by, and somebody reached over and stabbed him with a beak. At first King wasn’t sure whether it was genuine irritability or simple meanness; but King was not one who wanted to think ill of his fellows, and he decided that it must be irritability. The birds pecked at him and banged him about. He tried to move away; he tried to remain inconspicuous. But when he lifted a foot or breathed, it was impossible not to nudge somebody, and King was pecked and shoved till finally he found himself in a corner where he more or less hid his head.
Finally the car stopped. King heard the car doors open, he felt the box being carried. Huge things rumbled and whizzed by, and he scrambled further into the darkness of his corner. And suddenly a blinding light flashed and filled the box. Dazed, King felt frantic fluttering wings all around him, and much scrambling, jostling, and clapping, and more wings. King thought that all the birds had suddenly gotten very angry with him and were attacking. But then he was all alone and heard the boy and his father.
“He was eating all the grain I put out,” said the boy. “And he’s not nesting, he’s not feeding any babies.”
“Well, Bing…. You should have known better. He’ll never make it back. We’ll just have to bring him along.”
The boy folded the box shut, and it became dim and shadowy again, except for the thin stalks of light coming through the holes. The ride began again—just as long, just as hot. The floor of the box tipped suddenly one way, then another, and King was propelled against the walls. He wished the other birds had not gone. With them packed all around him, he hadn’t been able to move, but now he couldn’t stand still. And he preferred a sudden peck to a strange wall in the face.
Suddenly light filled the box again, and the boy’s hand appeared large and quick. King saw suddenly the father’s angry face and the flowing trees and houses, and then he was outside the car window. Something hit him, hard, momentarily muffling his eardrums, and he felt himself shooting away from the car, broken. He flapped his wings frantically and shot upwards, then sideways, then downwards. He bounced off the roof of a house. He saw the car he had come from turn a corner and disappear. And he flew again, blindly, and everything went by crazily and so frighteningly close—TV antennas, telephone poles, cars, trees, grass. Back and forth, hither and thither, he zigzagged through the maze of veering objects, hitting some, missing some, bursting through the leaves of a tree. He knew from what little flying experience he had that there was a direction of least resistance. And he began to take it. Back and forth, back and forth, upward, upward, back and forth. Slowly, very slowly, King attained a good altitude, and he began to relax and look about himself.
Down below King saw cars moving like so many ants with various colored wheat grains on their backs, a familiar sight when he was finally safe in the sky. He flew higher, and out on the horizon certain shapes and objects—a farmhouse, a river, a hill—began to appear, tiny but vaguely familiar, and he began to work toward them. But when he looked at them again they seemed farther away. King flapped harder, more frantically, and soon he lost sight of the things he was aiming at.
It was growing dark. King had been flying a long time, and all he could see now were new familiar objects of unfamiliar territory. Realizing how hungry and tired he was, he dropped downward, quickly, till he was down at tree-level. Then began the frightening zigzagging again, back and forth, hither and thither. And-Twang! King hit a wire—clung—and sat still.
In the morning, still on the wire, King saw a flock of pigeons clattering up over some trees, and he went after the pigeons. He missed the road, he missed the trees, he missed the silver storage tank, but he hit the rust-and-white colored flock. The pigeons exploded around him, and several followed him, but the flock came together again. For a half an hour King zigged into it, and zagged out, causing much commotion. Then suddenly the colorful pigeons moved over the houses nearby and descended on a strange coop. And King crashed down among them.
His throat beat rapidly. All around him there were strangers, and they made strange and different sounds—“RO-rooo! RO-rooo!” not “O-O-rooo!” or “O-O-O-rooo!” It was a different dialect, with different idioms and only a vaguely familiar rhythm. King watched the strangers dropping through the trap door and scrambling in the feed trough and fluttering around the water pan. And hunger and thirst got the best of fear. Back and forth, back and forth, King ran, trying to squeeze his head into the hexagonal holes in the chicken wire. Finally he came upon the trap and tumbled into the coop. He scampered to the water pan, drank, and then ran to the feed trough. But Rusty, one of the strange birds, knocked King away, and King stood back and caught up, as best he could, the few kernels that bounded away from all the hungry
beaks.
In the morning and in the evening, a strange boy filled the feed trough and the water pan. He left the door open and all the pigeons went out flapping loudly. But King remained inside, in a corner. And the boy did not notice King.
At least King was not alone any more, and there were several young hens about. But all the strangeness around him, and a surprising homesickness, made King unwilling to try his luck.
One day King decided to fly up to an unoccupied perch and claim it for his own. Fluttering about pathetically, he finally got hold of a ledge. It was a nice ledge. But it belonged to the strongest bird in the coop—Rusty who always knocked him away from the feed trough. Angrily Rusty shot upward, and