Delivering a Pigeon Egg

I am currently on vacation in the maritimes and have been visiting with my parents for a few days in Halifax. Their apartment is on the 12th floor of a tall downtown building, right across from the Public Gardens. Yesterday I woke up to find my mother rummaging around for something with which to assault some pigeons that had taken up residence on the balcony.

"But why?" I cried. Well, she didn't want them shitting everywhere. So I went out to see what was going on. Sure enough, there was a lady pigeon, and she flew away as soon as I walked up. I didn't even need to wave my arms or hit her with a stick. Mother appeared through the screen door, brandishing a broom. "Oh, it's gone," she said.

The pigeon had flown across to nearby building, leaving behind one single egg. It was very white, a tub of vanilla ice cream blended with four coffee beans. The balcony is made of concrete, carpeted with mini-putt turf. In the corner, utterly forlorn, was the nest and the egg she left behind. It was a tatters, just a few strands of straw and grass spread loosely around the egg, like a disappointing foreign dish. "What should we do with the egg?" I asked. "Throw it over," she said.

(Side note: pigeons weren't just scrabbled together out of old newspaper and paint chips. They're real birds called Rock Doves, and they like to live on cliffs. Whereas humans represent the element of wanton destruction for every other living species except raccoons, for rock doves we've been very generous, because we're rabid cliff builders. It's like if deer suddenly started filling the forest with cozy bungalows. And then covered them with nails.)

"We can't do that!" I balked. Without missing beat, she said, "Well then, take it to the lady downstairs." She was referring, of course, to the Russian lady who sells purses on the sidewalk across the street. Now that we weren't pitching it twelve stories to the road below, Mother started huffing about, wrapping the egg in paper towels. "What will she do with it?" I asked. "I don't know, make it into art or something," Mother said.

At this point I'd only been out of bed for about ten minutes. I slipped on my sandals and, holding the egg gingerly in a thick wad of paper towels, I descended the elevator to the street below. The purses were all strung up on the fence of the Public Gardens, a crazy-colored patchwork. The lady was crocheting a new purse. "I've brought you a pigeon egg," I told her. "How wonderful!" she exclaimed.

She thanked me profusely for bringing her the egg, and told me to thank my mother. I asked her what she would do with the egg, and she said that she would put it in a warm place and try to hatch it. Then she told me a story:

The park is full of ducks and geese and pigeons, and she had gotten into the habit of collecting their abandoned eggs. She liked to leave them in a dish on her table, just to show people who pass by. One day a very old man who had dementia stopped to look at her eggs. All of a sudden, he reached down and popped one in his mouth. She was horrified.

He looked at her with wide eyes, smiling strangely, chewed the egg and swallowed. Then, without saying a word, he walked away. She thought for certain he would die from it, and he did go missing from his daily walk for two or three days. But he survived, and continues to walk by her purse stand to this day.

I returned to the apartment to share a near-death experience with my parents not five minutes later, when a fighter jet flew right outside the window. Imagine hearing the loudest sound you've ever heard in your life, and then imagine thinking that you are about to die in a fiery explosion, and you have the feeling. You may think I'm exaggerating, but I'm not. Even my dad thought we were going to die. Very odd. And then I made coffee.