You know which animal is always credited as being man’s best friend. But try on this flighty idea: Man’s best friend may well be the common pigeon.
Pigeons don’t deserve their icky reputation, the National Audubon Society insists. They’re not dirtier than other animals and they don’t really spread disease. But they sure seem to upset some sense of natural order. Maybe that’s thanks to the unwanted gifts they drop from above. Or because they seem unperturbed by the supposed supremacy of people. Urban bottom-feeders like mice and raccoons usually retreat when we’re around, but “rats with wings” don’t care. They just go about their business.
In fact, pigeons are intelligent, trainable, darned fast and amazingly storied. They’ve played fascinating roles in human history — starting in ancient Egypt, where messenger pigeons spread the word about Nile River flooding, and in ancient Greece and Rome, where they carried military messages, shipping news and even results of the earliest Olympic Games.
Meanwhile, the ancient Greek poet Anacreon, a legendary drinker and partier, found another great use: trawling for girlfriends with verses distributed by bird:
“Oh, beauteous little pigeon, Say wither art thou flying? …”
“Anacreon has sent me … for one sweet little lyric …
I carry singing letters to one maid and another …”
This poetical pigeon goes on to swear that he’ll never quit Anacreon because “pecking his bread, and drinking out of his own sweet wine cup” is one plum gig.
Other historical pigeons had it tougher. For one thing, they’re reportedly delicious. Even as they took off as trainable novelties and pretty pets in the 19th century, they also started invading rooftops and park benches, earning that backlash of fear and resentment. The North American passenger pigeon wound up hunted to extinction over a century ago.
But homing pigeons that flew messages across enemy lines and natural barriers saved lives and earned medals for wartime heroics. Remote villages, islands and scientific expeditions continued relying on pigeon communication right up through recent years. It’s only the spread of the internet that has put the final few pigeon posts out of business.
Except, the very latest pigeons have Wi-Fi. Last year, an elite squadron of London homing pigeons went hi-tech on behalf of clean air, carrying aloft pollution-sniffing backpacks that weighed less than an ounce. Flying drones over the city is illegal, but not the Pigeon Air Patrol. For one week, the birds were released here and there around the city to fly home while their equipment transmitted real-time air quality information to citizens following online.
Bird beauty contest
This weekend, the National Pigeon Association’s 2017 Grand National Pigeon Show will bring thousands of beautiful birds to the Clark County Event Center.
Captivating beauty — not long-range navigation skill or speed — is the point at this fancy pigeon show.
“There’s a point system and standards of perfection for each breed, all the colors and markings and shapes and sizes,” said Orrie Moore, president of the Puget Sound Pigeon Club, based in Longbranch. “I think we’ll have around 3,000 birds there in Clark County, and people coming from Germany, Switzerland — all over the world.”
In fact, the chairman of the western USA district of the National Pigeon Association is Cam Datanagan, who’s flying here from Hawaii to take part in the Grand National festivities.
“This is like our Super Bowl,” he said. “We just try to get the kids off the computers and connected with the animals. People are going too electronic. We want them to experience nature. That’s our goal.”
Moore started as a boy with some baby birds his father brought home one day. They were amazingly trainable, he said; his friends got into the act also, and they started holding pigeon races between their homes. When Moore went to see pigeons on display at the Washington State Fair in Puyallup, his reaction was irritation — and ambition.
“I went home and told my dad, ‘I’ve got better birds than that,'” he said. Dad challenged him to prove it. A lifelong passion was set.
“It’s been a great hobby for 70 years,” Moore said. “You start working with them when they’re babies, you push them around and feed them, they get to know you. They’ll strut and coo. You can get them to do just about anything.”
