The TABloids. Issue 10, February, 2025

Evil Pigeons: A Short Story

By: Crow

The weather was crisp and cool, every bit of the ideal fall afternoon that is shown so prominently in indie coffee shop ads. Well, every bit as ideal for anyone but Nigel. You see, one sunny summer evening, when the weather changed to a cool breeze marking the coming of fall, the neighborhood pigeons became a rather strange folk. Since this inception, the pigeons that used to be just a part of the scenery began a questionable task of tormenting poor, poor Nigel. After the cool fall season took hold in the small London town of Bankstrough, Nigel had awoken to several mildly unpleasant disasters.

Nigel was obsessive about cleaning one of the windows in his house, a modest lodge on the cliff face that looked out towards the rioting sea, which he had paid more than he liked to admit with the few neighbors in the surrounding miles. The view from his lodge was Nigel’s prized possession, and while Nigel had never had more than one nightstand he imagined that if he had, he would sit in front of the window, a nightstand to either side, and drink coffee while watching the waves crash. But day after day he comes to find his window covered in pigeon feathers and worse. However, this wasn’t the only trouble Nigel faced.

His ride to work had never been eventful, but now? He has to get up an extra thirty minutes early to wipe bird poop off his windshield, thirty minutes, of which he would have normally spent lounging in bed with his coffee, windows open to the salty breeze. It was frustrating to say the least. The pigeons crowded on his stoop cooing at him blankly. But Nigel could feel that there must have been some malicious intent – that the birds knew what they were doing building a nest on his porch –  disrupting what had been the perfect Sunday coffee for the last five years. Now Nigel spent his mornings shoveling pigeon gunk off his car and porch, and don’t even get him started on the boat.

These pigeons had to go, for Nigel’s – now fragile –  peace of mind. Nigel had never disliked animals. He donated to the Humane Society every two weeks when his paycheck came in, he helped the neighborhood kids look for lost cats and dogs, and he even had this big Newfoundland he called Floof. But these birds. These birds had no respect for Nigel. It was infuriating to the poor man, who had lived his 30 years in relative contentment. Nigel took a deep breath; it would do no good to scream about the pigeons everywhere before he had to leave for work. No good at all, so he just resumed cleaning the gunk on his windshield with renewed fervor and a quiet voice in the back of his mind that proclaimed these pigeons would be gone before the week’s end.

Nigel sat through three hours of work, but was distracted by the soft chatter in the floor above him, so a smoke break was in order. Nigel dug through the pockets of his suit jacket (upon which there fluttered a stray feather he didn’t notice land on him) for his box of cigarettes. He walked towards his usual spot on the balcony of the fire escape and lit the end, taking a deep, soothing inhale. This was what he needed. Or, it was, until he heard the quiet coos, and the flapping of wings. A plague of pigeons descend upon the balcony. Nigel was tempted to sit and cry. Unfortunately, Nigel didn’t get the chance before one of the pigeons relieved himself on Nigel’s suit jacket. Nigel didn’t manage to stifle the scream of frustration that left his lips.