The truth: The white pigeons are tired

As I get closer on my bike, I immediately notice it: sitting on the side of the road, only centimeters separated from the traffic rushing past, is a slim white pigeon. Compared to her neglected relatives, the fat and stump-footed city pigeons with real street cred, she seems completely out of place. She clearly doesn't know what to do with the concept of road traffic and its dangers. In the surroundings she seems like an alien.

When a curious city pigeon lands near her to find out why the strange aunt is traipsing around in all the dirt wearing such a sensitive outfit, our little snow white recoils. That clumsy stinky bird touched her smoothly. Yuck. She shakes her pearly white feathers. Ogotto god, sepsis, syphilis, bird flu. You never know with these hoodlums here.

She is the cliché image of a dove of peace. One could almost see this as a symbol of our times: unprotected, doomed doves of peace, helpless and lost. The sight should make the hearts of the Orthodox peace lovers swell, because this is exactly how they imagine the near future of the Ukrainian population.

But it is more likely that the bird on the street is not a peace dove, but a wedding dove, or better yet, because the party is over. Some couple of lovebirds had the brilliant idea of ​​releasing white doves into the sky as they left the registry office in the green outskirts of the city that morning.

"Listen, darling, such a flock is available on the internet for as little as two hundred euros. And look, pure ornamental birds are much cheaper than carrier pigeons, which then find their way back to their loft. But romance should still be affordable, and after all, this is our wedding and not the pigeons'. After all, the guests have to find their way home alone. Hehe."

Yes, hehe. Now the evening has come, with cold and darkness in the middle of the city. The white pigeons are tired, they have been standing in traffic for a long time. Because such domestic pigeons or fantail pigeons have been completely bred out of their sense of direction. If fate is kind to them, a quick end awaits them at the hands of a hawk, marten or Audi. If not, a slow one through starvation, thirst or freezing.

Because only our clever vagabonds from the city pigeon front know how to get something to eat here or where to find shelter at night. They are washed with all water. The boldest ones are heard whispering to each other that they killed a person with their bare beaks. For them, doves of peace are just victims. Like old Palatinate tourists at Kotti at night. One of them only faked contact beforehand in order to steal the wedding pigeon's wallet with the last of her money, return ticket and the breeder's home address in it.

Our white dove, on the other hand, is completely innocent. Otherwise she wouldn't talk to rats here. But she only knows love, peace and the crate in which the cheap wedding event provider bred her. There she lived only on olive branches and holy water. And while the bad guys in their dirty gray smocks simply shit everywhere, the white pigeon, with its beak becoming ever more pinched, is desperately looking for a discreet and hygienically perfect bird box. Because who wants to soil their dazzling white feathers?

With which you can't do the slightest thing in the rough everyday life of pigeons. You are more likely to become a shining target for birds of prey, robbers and tricksters. Ah, thinks the wedding dove, lucky, there's a fox scurrying between the parked cars back there. He looks very smart. I could ask him for directions, I'm completely disoriented.

“Hello, hello,” she calls. “Excuse me, Ms. Fuchs, where is Taubenstrasse, please?” Maybe she'll finally know her way around there again? Or there is even a consulate for your kind. The fox opens his mouth. Presumably to speak.

In a cartoon for the little ones, a very shirt-winged city pigeon would come to the rescue at the very last moment, with a distinctive scar over the base of its beak from a knife fight with a cat, uncouth but honest and good at heart. Pigeon Joe, the head brother of the neighborhood, would save the white pigeon and bring it to its common place to sleep under the junk on the orphaned balcony of a tenant who had died months ago.

That's where they live, the lady and the tramp. She teaches him table manners, healthy eating and pigeon chess; he teaches her karate, pickpocketing and how to survive on the streets. Everything could be so beautiful. But unfortunately reality is not a children's film.