Sometimes strange things happen.
Sometimes we observe them.
Sometimes we participate.
Sometimes that’s a good thing.
Sometimes its bad.
As I left work this evening, a frequent realization hit me that I hadn’t even picked up my camera today, and was running out of light to capture my image of the day. With that thought in mind, I drove the drive driven by me (the driver) daily. Head on a swivel, I was poised to permanently record anything of interest for all the world to see. When I gave up on finding anything new, I pulled over to see what I could make of the sunset.
BORING!
While evaluating the scene and trying to compose something interesting, I saw something odd…
WTF is that pigeon doing? It’s not moving. It’s just standing there.
It almost looks like it’s waiting for a car to jump in front of… What is going ON? Is this pigeon contemplating suicide?
He must be! Those cars are passing at 60 mph…
I’m not sure what I was thinking at this point, but my curiosity caused me to take a step forward…
Maybe this flustered the bird. I can only imagine it did.
In my daily life, I hate pigeons, but watching what happened next seriously affected me. He walked forward into the road and stood in the lane. My heart sank, my body cringed, my camera lowered from my eye…
BAM!
Again, I have no strong feelings for the advocacy of human and pigeon peace, but something about that moment was horrible to see. I’m not sure if it was due to some deep seeded personification of that pigeon from my childhood of watching Animaniacs, but I stood there in horror staring at a pile of bird; feathers swirling around.
Don’t worry about pressing charges, I’ve already admitted guilt and sentenced myself to countless minutes of torment over what I feel I caused. Maybe the bird was going to do it anyway…
I’ll never know…
Here is my tribute, to the fallen pigeon… Hopefully you’re ruining people’s al fresco dining experiences in some alternate universe… Your final image…
That image can be viewed by CLICKING HERE to see it in the larger context of my Image of the Day Project.
And just to rinse all that creepiness out of your brain, here is a photo I took of the sunset after this awful event…
Matt He Wanders On 