Trees, Birds and Newspapers

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree...

Mr. Kilmer's poem is of course widely known and quoted. And in my household growing up memorably sung by my mother. Perhaps that's where my exposure to poetry took hold.

It's a great sentiment, and one I nearly share, except when the tree-huggers tell me that paper just killed another tree. I grit my teeth and silently take it, telling all tree-huggers under my breath that trees grow back. They are not endangered.

Newspaper is of course made from wood pulp, which of course comes from trees. So, the tree-huggers probably are cheering heartily for the death of print. I have my own poem, but it doesn't rhyme:

I think that I shall never read
More information on one page
Than what I head in a newspaper.

I love print. There's nothing more informative that absorbing the front page of at least two daily newspapers. Take today's WSJ. I'll bet you never knew what I'm going to reveal the story says about pigeons. Yes, those grey buggers that foul statues and concrete.

Todays WSJ A-Hed piece is about European pigeons, but it really applies everywhere. The headline goes:

                         To Frankfurt's Pigeons,
                       Outdoor Life Is for the Birds.

                    As avians roost in train station,
                     pecking disrupts order: 'the plaque.'

The WSJ loves puns when they do these pieces. They don't do the piece if they can't work in a pun.

Consider what you can have learned from a read of today's article.

Did you know pigeons are in the dove family?
I did know this from prior WSJ stories about pigeons.

The dexterity they have in flying stems from their link to living in cliffs.
Pigeons don't really like trees. And come to think of it, how many pigeons have you ever seen come swooping out of tree? Pigeons are "descendants of rock doves--seaside birds that live on precipices and caves. They prefer to nest on ledges, roofs, beams and other flat surfaces."

This explains a great deal. It doesn't give you the origin of "stool pigeon," but help yourself to Google on that one. Or, go to a prior posting : http://onofframp.blogspot.com/2014/01/stool-pigeon.html

They apparently love tunnels. Which is what is attracting them to the Frankfurt train station, because it is open at one end. The birds have, no joke, learned how to wait for automatic doors to open.

I can offer a first hand exception to pigeons not roosting in trees. My father, who was not a hoarder but was certainly a procrastinator, seemed to be unable to take his Christmas tree out of the apartment he was living in in Crystal City, Virginia to be disposed of at the end of the season, when everyone else seemed to acknowledge that it was time to do so. For some reason, he took to dragging it out onto the terrace. He might have thought the cold was going to do something. I can no longer ask him.

I didn't visit him often in Virginia, but one May we did go down there and found three Christmas trees on his terrace, in increasing stages of decomposition, the apparent oldest one being the barest. There was at least one pigeon in it. I'm not sure if a three year old Christmas tree can qualify as still being a tree, but it did offer proof that my father needed someone to live with him.

Pigeons will not defecate (shit) on you while they are flying.
Apparently they can't poop and flap at the same time. This is somewhat reassuring, but shouldn't allow you to drop your guard. I always looked at where to stand at the Wantagh  train station by first looking up, then looking down for signs of droppings. It's no less of a mess to have pigeon poop on you just because they weren't airborne.

And there you have it. A delightful, informative  piece on pigeons. Front page. Of a newspaper. Brought to you by a tree.

http://onofframp.blogspot.com