Open Writing

One day, while I was still living in New York State, I stood in line at the Post Office, hardly aware of the man standing in front of me. What eventually brought him to my attention was that each time the line moved forward, he pushed a large cardboard box along with his foot. The box had ventilation holes in the top and printing on the sides that indicated the contents were live and the package should be handled accordingly.

Consumed with curiosity, I couldn’t resist asking what was inside. “Pigeons” came the laconic reply, delivered with a northern English accent. Since no further explanation was forthcoming, I asked what kind of pigeons. After all, most major cities in the US are trying to eliminate pigeons, and the methods chosen were unlikely to include shipping them elsewhere by mail. “Racing pigeons,” he said. By now I was hooked and had to know the whole story if it took forever. Fortunately the line was long and slow.

I explained that my curiosity was not of the idle kind, and that my hometown in England boasted numerous “pigeon fanciers” as they are called. I was intrigued as to why the man was sending the pigeons by mail, and astonished that it was even possible. I was aware that the US postal service has been trying extraordinarily hard to compete with private mailing and shipping companies, but this seemed to me to be over the top.

As it turned out, the postal service has been routinely offering this convenient way to ship small creatures for a while. They provide the packing boxes, and special handling methods to ensure that the contents are not left for days in a warehouse or van. And what is the purpose of mailing pigeons at all you may ask? Isn’t it the pigeon that’s supposed to carry the mail?

Well, message-carrying pigeons are mostly a thing of the past, but pigeons love to fly, and to exercise their mysterious ability to navigate over vast distances. The pigeon fanciers, for their part, take great pride in their pets’ abilities and endurance, and want to prove that their birds are superior. So they send them to remote points on the map and record the time of their return, often sitting up night after night so that the returning birds won’t come home to an empty house.

Some don’t make it home at all; swept away by storms, overcome by exhaustion, or lost due to an inexplicable failure of their homing instincts. Occasionally a racing pigeon will be gunned down by that other kind of pigeon fancier, the one that likes to eat them. Sometimes a “lost” bird will turn up weeks later; the assumption being that it was recovering en route from fatigue or injury.

When I was a child, the fanciers would ship their pigeons by train. It was a common sight to see the wicker baskets piled up on the station platform. The porters took special care in handling the baskets so that the birds would not be perturbed. On arrival at their destination, they would be released to fly home, and the time of the release recorded. I’m not sure who did the releasing and time recording, but I have to assume that fanciers have an organization, and that their fellow members take care of these details.

Pigeon fanciers themselves are a breed apart – almost always solid working class types, they tend to be loners, and not given to loquacity except when talking to another fancier. In the area where I grew up, many of them were steel workers or miners. Their jobs were often brutally tough and noisy, so one could only imagine that handling and taking care of the gentle birds would be therapeutic, especially listening to the soft cooing.

The pigeons were housed in “lofts”, sometimes called “cotes”, that, in cities, were sometimes located on rooftops. But more usually, in my area, were built on the small patches of garden called allotments that the men could lease in the absence of a garden attached to their house. Such allotments are a common sight alongside the railroad tracks in England and parts of Europe. The lofts are usually painted in distinctive colors - blue or red and white stripes, to help the pigeons identify their home.

At some time each day, the fanciers release their birds for exercise, and clouds of pigeons can be seen flying in mile-wide circles as they flock together. The fanciers watch carefully to make sure their birds are in good form, and to determine whether the need for a change of diet might be indicated. In the days before a race, the pigeons are fed energy-sustaining foods, and the fanciers all have their own, secret recipes.

By now, my companion-in-line and I were approaching the post office counter, so I hurriedly quizzed him for last details. I could see that the address on the box was a town in Florida, and inquired if they were being sent there to race back to New York. “Nay lad,” said the gentleman, with his northern twang, “These is breedin’ birds. They’re goin’ to Spring ‘ill in Florida to be mated.”

“Why Spring ‘ill, er, Hill?” I asked.

“That’s where pigeon fanciers go to die,” he replied quietly, with a faint smile.

Thinking he was pulling my leg, in the habit of northern English folk, I dug a little deeper, and discovered that there is indeed a large group of retirees in Spring Hill from England and elsewhere, who breed and race pigeons. We parted with a handshake, and I wished him luck with his birds, shaking my head at the implausibility of life.

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