Friday, January 18, 2008

Pigeon Portraits

Call me an old sentimentalist, but I liked this story in my local paper very much - and the pictures, which are really rather fine. In France and Belgium, naturellement, they take this matter more seriously. I have often admired this monument in Lille. Brussels, I believe, has something similar. Allons, pigeons de la patrie...

9 comments:

  1. Another reason to hate Red Ken - his vendetta against these noble creatures...

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  2. Too right, Celebritish (whose splendid blog I commend to Thought Experimenters)!

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  3. We should eat them! The French would, I'm sure.

    (Hey, what about the Polish?!)

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  4. Hmmm...I would have expected the post dancing on Bobby Fischer's grave to be up by now. I wonder what's taking so long?

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  5. Only statue I remember in Brussels is that one of the little boy peeing.

    But I love the concept of the "pigeon soldat." Hard to believe they were doing it voluntarily, though: More like they just want to home in to the place where food awaited. No doubt they wondered why the bullets were whistling by, etc.

    I feel a reggae tune coming on: "Pigeon soldiers, comin' to America!" If they do, it'll probably be to spread disease....I like 'em, but you can't eat 'em. The homeless in NYC must constantly be stopped from doing just that because the pigeons have all kinds of diseases they are "carrying."

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  6. Thanks for the tip, Nige - good story & pictures, I agree. BTW, is Red Ken on his way to re-election?

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  7. Susan, these were French pigeons, their hearts burning with love of la patrie, their souls ablaze with dreams of la gloire. If it wasn't for the humans, France might even have won the odd war...
    Randy, Ken is probably unassailable, which is not only a shame but a colossal scandal. His regime is clearly deeply corrupt, apart from all the rest, yet he just smiles and shrugs and 'charms' his way through. Nauseating.

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  8. In that case, Nige, here's hoping Ken's friend Hugo drops by and tops off your tank every time you're in the city.

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  9. You'd think that with all that pigeons do for London, there would be some suitable civic architecture celebrating them. Somebody should suggest to Livingstone that he commission a large pigeon sculpture, on which we would all be encouraged to sit and crap.

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