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Blogs by Jean Sheldon
Upstaged by a Pigeon 6/23/2007 5:14:02 AM
After moving all my belongings into my new apartment, I decided the thing to do was clean first, and then unpack. Unfortunately, I’m not one of those people who lists the contents on the outside of every box. I had no idea where my cleaning supplies were and decided to buy a few new things. I’d use them eventually.
The apartment was in a nice, old six-flat in Chicago, a couple of blocks from Wrigley Field. Since April can be a little chilly, I grabbed my windbreaker and headed to the store. It wasn't far and the weather was great for a walk. Unfortunately, the store wasn’t open yet and I had about a five-minute wait.
The corner was at an intersection of two major streets and a popular place for homeless Chicagoans to gather. I found an open spot on the wall to lean and settled in to wait for the store to open. At the same moment that I noticed a large number of pigeons wandering around, I felt something fall on my jacket and I didn’t have to look up to know what had landed on my right shoulder. A milky white and grey line of pigeon poop rolled down the front of my dark burgundy windbreaker.
Things happen, I told myself, all I could do was clean it up. I dug through my pockets for tissue but came up empty and went to the garbage can on the corner. I poked around until I found a discarded newspaper and wiped off most of the dropping. As I threw the paper back in the trash, I looked across the street and saw three or four news cameras pointed in the direction of the store. I may have gulped audibly.
As casually as I could, I walked around the corner and leaned on a less visible piece of the wall, checking above to see if anyone else had me in their sites. “Oh brother,” I told a lingering pigeon, “don’t let that be a news crew doing a story on the hygiene habits of the homeless.” I was, at that time, the Art Director of the graphics department in a large and stuffy firm. They would have been less than pleased to see me digging through a garbage can.
Five minutes later, I took off and my glasses, tied my jacket around my waist and walked around to the front of the store. I made a dramatic gesture, as if I just discovered it was there, and ran in and bought every cleaning supply I could carry.
Since I had a personal interest, I found out they were in fact filming for a show on homelessness in Chicago and it aired a few months later on PBS. I watched, holding my breath until the end and was delighted that I didn’t appear. I have to admit though, that I couldn’t help but wonder why they cut my scene. They kept all the damn pigeons.
