June 11 – “A Monkey or a Monk?”

Pigeon hunting.  Now that’s not something I expected to ever do.  I can’t say that pigeon noticing was particularly in my wheelhouse, either.  All that changed after a simple walk that Chris and Cailyn took to the end of our street and back. 

Cailyn was excited to show me something upon their return, but that in itself wasn’t unusual at all.  It was a picture Nani had taken on her cell phone.  Cailyn was sidling up to a bird, within just a few feet in fact.  And they had a close-up of the creature as well.  It was a pigeon, all right, but it looked like someone had starched its collar and turned it upside down so that it stuck straight up in the air.  Well, maybe that’s not quite accurate.  It was more like the thing was wearing a mink stole and had it pulled up to cover its ears.  Now I’m not at all good with colors, but this was pretty colorful.  It had a white head and a reddish brown body.  Chris texted Nathan to get an opinion as to its nature from pigeon aficionado extraordinaire, “Uncle Andy.”   The first command was to let the thing go.  “Pigeons are better off in the wild.”  We didn’t have a cage or anything, so that was easy to follow.  Chris did some research and found a picture that seemed to match, a red capuchin (sounds like a monkey to me), one of the breed of fancy pigeons (who knew there was a breed called “fancy pigeon”?).  Not long after that, however, a second word came down from the venerable Uncle Andy.  In his opinion the bird was not a red capuchin (still sounds monkey-ish), but rather a Jacobin monk pigeon (so Cailyn was disturbing its prayer time?), and they are very rare.  He said, in a word, “Catchit” (I always knew that as two words).  Apparently capuchin monk pigeons can’t eat on their own.  He assured us if we could catch it and put it in a box, then he would come get it.  So, we left the comfort of the Astros game, grabbed a box, and headed down the street.  I wondered at the time if we should also bring along some salt to put on its tail.  I heard that’s how to catch a bird.  Maybe there are more scientific methods available now, though.  It had been an hour or two since first contact, so of course the critter was long gone.  Sadly, Uncle Andy won’t be getting his rare pigeon to hand-feed.

Later on last night, however, we were in the front yard, and we had another visitor.  Yep.  Another pigeon.  Not the same one, though.  This one was almost completely white, with a few specs of brown mixed in.  It had a similar cowl as its counterpart, but slightly different.  This one reminded me of something the Queen of England might wear.  You know, the cape with the massively high collar.  Very strange looking.  This one strolled around under the car and even up on the front porch.  Cailyn and I briefly had it surrounded, but neither of us had the salt shaker, so the bird managed an escape.  I vowed that next time I chased a monkey or a monk I would do it with a fishing net instead of a salt shaker.

Oh, and then, just to make things interesting, just as we were leaving for Jachin’s baseball game around 7:30 last night, it was back.  The monkey … or was it the monk.  Wait … it was the white one.  We never got a determination on that one.  Either way, it had returned to laugh at our meager efforts.  Curse you, White Monkey-monk.  We’ll get you next time.

Psalms 50:11 says, “I know every bird in the mountains, and the creatures of the field are mine.”

Father, thank you for the wide variety of, well, pigeons that you created.  They really were pretty.  And to think … you know every sparrow that falls, so I’m pretty sure you keep track of those pigeons as well.  And us.  Amen.