By Daisy Barringer
I’ve read 1984 more times than I can count, so I know better than to share this, but here goes nothing…
I am terrified of pigeons.
Not in, like, an “Ew, gross, pigeons are flying rats” kind of way. No, my fear is much more of an “Ohmygod, there’s a flock of pigeons 50 feet ahead of me on the sidewalk, so I’d better move to Antarctica before they see me and attack” kind of thing.
The thing about pigeons is that there’s no escaping them. They have feet and wings, which pretty much make them invincible. Anywhere I can go, they can go faster. They totally have the upper hand — or wing, as it were.
I wasn’t always petrified of pigeons. When I was 10 years old, I found the hundreds of pigeons in Trafalgar Square completely lovable. I wasn’t even that bothered the first (yes, first) time one deposited green poop all over my white shirt in downtown SF. In fact, it took several encounters — a pigeon swooping so low he brushed the top of my head, a nest of pigeons roosting outside my bedroom window making that unbearable cooing noise and numerous flocks of pigeons diving directly at my eyes—for my full-fledged terror to realize itself.
Because after all those incidents, it was obvious: these attacks weren’t random. They weren’t coincidental. And they certainly weren’t unplanned. No. The pigeons were out to get me. And clearly, nothing was going to get in their way.
My fear of pigeons really escalated when I started commuting on the N Judah. I’d board the train at 4th and King, a stop where the platform is even with the train floor. Not a lot of people get on the N Judah at 4th and King, so on many occasions, I’d be the only one boarding my car. Unless you count the pigeons that joined me. WHICH I DO.
I cannot count the amount of times the doors were about to shut and a pigeon would hop on the train at the last second, his feet click-clacking loudly while he rooted for food, sticking his filth-covered beak into the grooves in the floor. And there I’d be — helpless, alone and completely trapped, just waiting for him to mount his attack.
I get that the pigeons are more scared of me than I am of them. Or at least that’s what my mother said the first time I called her in a panic from the train. That’s right. I’m a grown woman who called her mommy because she was scared of a bird.
Her words did nothing to assuage me, however. The pigeon walked right by my foot, and so I did what any person in my situation would do: I screamed. I screamed, the pigeon started flying, and I curled into the fetal position, my feet on the seat, my face curled toward my chest and my hands covering my head. As though that would stop him.
I held my breath, knowing (hoping) the pigeon would get off at the next stop. “It’s almost over,” I told myself. “Just be quiet and don’t move. Don’t make eye contact. Don’t breathe. He’ll leave soon.”
Oh, how naïve I can be.
Because when those doors opened and people started streaming into the car, that pigeon spazzed. It started flapping its wings and diving and swooping, and everyone coming on the train looked at me as though I were somehow responsible. Meanwhile all I could do was cover my face and squeal, “I HATE PIGEONS!” at the top of my lungs while the bird lunged toward me in an attempt to escape the onslaught of new passengers.
But then, finally, it flew through the open doors and out of the train. And I sat in my seat and lowered my arms into my lap, all the while muttering, “I hate pigeons. I just hate them.” Eventually, the crowd stopped staring at the crazy girl (me) and took their seats, and I sat there shaking, the sound of wild, beating feathers echoing in my mind.
One might think that for a girl who’s scared of pigeons, that would be her worst encounter. But in that case, one would be wrong. Oh, so wrong.
Not so many months later, I returned home from drinking with friends around 10:00 o’clock at night. I entered my apartment and went to hang up my jacket in the coat closet. As soon as I shut the closet door, I heard the worst sound imaginable: feathers flapping. I turned my head toward the living room just in time to see something swooping down in the dark shadows.
I didn’t need to investigate any further because I knew what it was. I knew that my worst fear was coming true. I knew that the pigeons, at long last, had found me.
I ran to my bedroom, slammed the door shut and called my big brother (who lives in the same building as I do) on the phone. I called again and again and again, but he didn’t pick up.
Finally, I stuck my head out of my bedroom window and saw that a light was on in his apartment.
“TODD!!!!!” I screamed. “TODD!!!! HELP ME!!!!”
He stuck his head out the window, and I blurted out, “There’s a pigeon in my living room! Please get him out. Hurry!” I’m not going to lie…there might have been (definitely were) tears.
Todd knows that pigeons are my sworn enemy, and so, like a good brother, he came to my apartment armed with a broom. I hid in my bedroom, the door open just a crack, while he went to work.
“I see him!” he yelled. And then, “Oh my God, there are two of them!”
I heard furniture being knocked over, wings spastically flapping, Todd grunting and cussing, and then, finally…
“They’re gone. I got ’em. They’re gone.”
I emerged from my bedroom cautiously. “Are you sure?”
“They’re gone. Promise.” He wiped sweat from his brow.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m so sorry you had to do that. I just…I couldn’t have.”
“No problem,” he said.
And I turned to take in the damage.
My living room was a disaster. My living room, which is always pristine because of my mild case of OCD, was now covered in pigeon shit and feathers. My couch, my table, my rug and even my cashmere blanket that I cuddle with — all targets. All hit with white and green poop. Even the mirror that hangs on the wall didn’t escape their wrath. All because I left a window open. All because I’m the hunted.
It was too much to take in, so I left the war zone and went to bed. I’d tackle it in the morning.
I learned several things over the course of the next few days:
1. Pigeons travel in pairs.
2. Pigeon poop does not come out of fabric as easily as one might think.
3. And when I screamed my brother’s name so loudly he thought I was being murdered? He was having sex with some chick. Oopsie!
Though no pigeons have moved into my apartment since that fateful night, they haven’t given up on stalking me. If I’m in a park, they swarm at my feet. If I’m walking down the street, they fly at my head. I even had one follow me into Paper Source on Fillmore Street. “Oh, sorry,” I said as the clerk frantically tried to get the pigeon out of his window display, and I cowered behind a rack of colorful stationery. “They just follow me around.”
It’s hard having a phobia of an animal that is so prevalent in the place I call home. There are pigeons almost everywhere in SF. It’s impossible to completely avoid them. I do my best to move slowly and cautiously when one is near, but all too often, when they lift their wings and start to fly, I let out a shriek. I might as well get “Sorry, I’m really scared of pigeons” tattooed on my forehead since I’m constantly saying it to perplexed strangers.
My phobia of pigeons is bad. Intellectually, I know that it’s a ridiculous fear, that the pigeons aren’t really out to get me (that’s a lie because they are), but fear isn’t rational. It’s emotional. And nothing I do changes it.
In fact, it’s so bad that when I first started therapy a few years ago, I brought it up.
“I’m really scared of pigeons,” I told my therapist. “Like, I live in constant fear that one will fly into my car window, and I’ll jump out without turning off the car, and it will plow into an intersection and kill someone. Do you think we should talk about that?”
He laughed. “I think you have way bigger problems to work on before we get to that.”
And I guess he was right. Because it’s been two years, and we still haven’t talked about the pigeons.
Images by Abhinav Bhatt, Christian Johannesen, Ben Spark, fatedsnowfox, nouspique
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