The Birds
My sister’s and my favorite activity of the day was feeding the pigeons in St. Mark’s square. It was a little disgusting, but mostly fun. And we laughed so hard throughout it that we cried and had black eyes from our smeared mascara. See, what you can do is go up to one of the pigeon feed stands and buy a packet of corn in a little white envelope for 1 Euro. As soon as that envelope hits your hand (or glove, in my case), the fun begins. There must be about a thousand pigeons in that square, and I don’t think any of them fear humans. And when they see that white envelope, they know what you have. I was up first, with my sister videotaping. The pigeons swarmed and started landing on me as soon as I moved away from the feed stand. I started freaking out, bending my head over and swatting at the pigeon on my head. I hadn’t even opened the envelope or revealed any corn and they were already all over me! Once I managed to get through the pecking to open the bag of corn, it got even crazier. I didn’t mind them all being on my arms and such, but I didn’t let any stay on my head for very long because I really didn’t want to end up with any little reminders of pigeon in my hair. I played around with the corn, letting the birds eat it out of my hand, throwing some, and then decided to entice some and try to catch a pigeon. It was too easy. I caught a number of them and held each in my hands for my sister to see. It took the pigeons a few minutes to realize I had run out of food; some were still attacking the white envelope in search of more.
I went to take the bags and camera from my sister and told her “Your turn” as I tried to brush the pigeon feathers and residue off my fleece jacket. I had just as much fun watching my sister get attacked and catching it all on video. I was laughing so hard sometimes, I couldn’t keep the camcorder still! Especially when she started freaking out when they were pecking her hands and asked me “How did you feed them?” I was like, “Just put your hand out! Flat—like this.” I showed her. “No, I know! But it hurts!” She replied. “Oh—I had gloves on,” I realized what she meant. After being thoroughly mobbed by pigeons and trying her hand at catching some too, my sister threw her final handful of corn—at me. That was fun. A brief swarm of pigeons in my direction. Then we walked out of the center of St. Mark’s square with what dignity we could to the sidewalk where we attempted to clean up some. Even as we walked away, my sister and I each had a pigeon friend on our arms; they stayed until they finally got the memo that we were out of food. Then they departed. As we cleaned ourselves off with napkins and Wet-Ones, we realized that maybe we should have eaten lunch before feeding the pigeons.
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