Urban Warriors

  Sitting at Cardonald pedestrian traffic lights two pigeons flew over the car and landed on the road island, standing on the road studs for visually impaired folk. Green man comes on, bleeper bleeps, and they start strutting across the road,the arrogant saunter of ornithological neds, just making it before the lights flashed and the traffic started moving. Last I saw them they were plundering the remains of someone’s discarded takeaway.

Pigeon’s – not the Mary Poppins, ‘Feed the Birds Twopence a Bag’ kind; and not the biblical or liturgical dove of peace either; but the hardened urban warriors who work part time as the auxilliary co-opted members of local authority cleansing operatives. And as evolutionary survival tactics, they do us the service of eating our throwaway rubbish and set an example by waiting for the green man before crossing.