The pigeon who thought it was a raven

A sun ray had been slicing me in half for a while now, a kiss without the heat, when I noticed with my shaded eye a mixed murder of crows undeterred by the glacial winds. 

Ruthless cold, I once heard someone say, forces unusual fraternity upon various types of corvids. 

It took me a good minute to discern the pigeon in their midst. 

Crows and pigeons have visibly two things in common, I thought. 

One, their ability to fly. 

Two, their perpetual, earthbound obsession with foods made available to them by heedless humans, or in rare instances, affectionate ones. 

In my mind they otherwise differed considerably. 

Crows in non-densely populated areas, perhaps for their laudable intellect and Edgar Allan Poe, were deemed an enigmatic presence. Consciously they dupe some humans into affection with recurrent visits to their balconies for organic treats while their kin plot more devious endeavors. 

Pigeons, perhaps for their unsolicited abundance and their missing eyelids, were labeled as beggars, bullies whose dull-witted gaze eternally failed to thaw a person’s heart. In unanimous accord they were held accountable for all the bird poop that finds its way to a human scalp. 

But this pigeon was different. 

Remarkably, its crown of feathers was identical in color to that of the crows surrounding it. One could say this pigeon was considerably more robust than the thousands of pigeons I have come to observe. It would even be accurate to conclude that this pigeon matched the elfish constitution of a magpie. 

When I looked closer at the bunch, and more intently at the pigeon in their midst, I could see how it had learned to mimic the human-like regard of its companions, or the hubris with which they carried themselves among the anthropoid dwellers of the land. 

Though, I could not help but feel that the pigeon held its head low, partly to conceal its treacherous beak, as well to convey a form of obedience and servitude, for it was conscious of its infiltration, ashamed of it but grateful for it still. 

As I kept observing this pigeon for lack of a more absorbing activity, over time I started to understand that it trod loyally by the sturdiest crow in the group, a common raven, almost like its shadow.

In what looked like a sloppy show of reverence momentarily exposing its true colors, I watched it hasten shamelessly to bring about a cracked nut that had just been dropped from a tree by another crow at work. A pigeon’s beak cannot wedge and peck a nut open, I thought, but it can carry it. 

About a dozen yards away around the same pond, I now contemplated a flock of pigeons scavenging an abandoned bag of Cheetos that beforehand stood still from its own weight (had the renouncer of this barely consumed bag suddenly come to the realization that Cheetos kill?) 

When their famished clamor subsided, it looked as though there had been enough carbs for the lethargic gang to wallow or for some to resume their more poised shenanigans.

I now peered again at the pigeon who thought it was a raven. 

With a studied disinterest it allowed itself a glance at its siblings, a stone’s throw away with their orange-tainted mandibles, before returning its watchful eye to its (tor)mentor.

Was this pigeon made pariah by its own kind? Or was it a messiah, driven out of the congregation by its own ambition? 

My futile pondering was interrupted by a deep, muted coo that coincided with the ominous disappearance of the sun. It clearly emanated from the pigeon, I thought, its lidless glare now locked on me like a raven’s on a lifeless prey. 

In its sardonic voice (though imbued with pathos), I almost heard it say: 

If you rat me out I’ll fucking kill you.