Like any large buzzing and gurgling international city, Paris is filled with pigeons. I doubt that the city fact-keepers have a number for the pigeon population, but it must be in the zillions.
Pigeons are a fact of city life; like traffic and loud thumps from the neighbors upstairs, one cannot escape them. But what has surprised me during the short time I’ve lived here are the seagulls. The closest shore line is about 150 kilometers, or 243 miles, northwest to the town of Dieppe as a gull flies. The only major body of water here is, of course, the river Seine in the heart of the city.
What brings them here, I wondered? Why do they stay? I was fortunate the other day to interview both a seagull and pigeon one bright, sun-filled afternoon on a bench overlooking the circular pond at the Tuileries Gardens.
ME: Why are you here, Mr. Gull? Surely the shoreline at Brittany would hold more attractions to a bird of your persuasion and feel more like home than a cement pool in a city garden.
GULL: this is Paris, The City of Lights, hub of Europe! Home to Hugo, Molière, Toulouse Lautrec and Edith Piaf. Great ideas and revolutions were born here. It’s a city of inspiration and art, culture and cuisine. Who wouldn’t want to be here?
ME: But you belong to the sea, the salty air, the briny ocean. Don’t you miss the relaxing sound of the waves?
GULL: The incessant honking from impatient drivers stuck in traffic has the same soothing effect. And it’s not as monotonous as the shore. One can always hear a THUD, THUD, THUD from a car radio or the occasional police siren and jack hammer. It’s a calming cacophony that burrows into your brain stem like white noise from a radio. It barely registers any more.
ME: Can you find enough to eat?
PIGEON: Let me jump in here. Paris is the best place for food. Of course it’s a gastronomical paradise for you humans, but for birds, it’s Eden. Have you seen what is left over after a marché, after any one of the outdoor markets around town? Scraps of lettuce and spinach, bits of sliced oranges hanging off the skins, mashed, over-ripe bananas, partially rotted zucchinis. It’s a treasure trove of eating.
GULL: And that’s not to forget everything you humans drop on the sidewalks. Crumbs from your morning pain au raisin and croissant, pieces of a sandwich of jambon, gruyère et crudités, Styrofoam boxes of frites smothered in ketchup, the odd Cornet wrapper. Why, just last week, someone dropped a crate of melons in the street in front of the fish monger’s stand at the Marché d’Aligre. Ah! The sweet flavor of melons mixed with the heady aroma of fresh cod and scallops! The city is littered with this stuff. And you call us filthy animals. Bouf!
ME: I wasn’t aware that city living was so compatible to birds. I suppose Paris is a city for everyone.
PIGEON: Not as much as it used to be. It’s changed, like everything else. Just recently, as a matter of fact.
ME: How do you mean?
PIGEON: The recent law banning smoking in cafés and other public buildings.
ME: How has that affected you?
PIGEON: Everyone goes outside now and lights up. They huddle together looking like convicts in a prison yard, planning a tunnel escape and smoking. Small, dense clouds of second-hand smoke drift up to our perches on windowsills and doorways. It’s harder to breathe these days. I can barely taste the three-day-old crumbs of an abandoned baguette.
ME: What can you do?
GULL: Me, I can follow the river, I suppose. Get into the country, maybe even to the shore. But I won’t. I’d miss la vie parisienne.
PIGEON: As for me, je ne sais pas. (he gives a slight Gallic shrug, as much as he can given that he has wings and no shoulders to speak of). I love Paris too much to leave. It soaks into your skin, through the bone to your marrow, slowly, unawares, until you can’t tell the difference between your own blood and a ‘93 Volnay. You wake up one morning and discover you’ve always wanted to be here, were meant to be here. Paris is my home, my habitat. How can you give up what makes you alive, gives purpose to living, what …
Our conversation was interrupted by a Dutch tourist who had dropped a crêpe filled with Nutella. The gull and pigeon raced over to join the frenzy with the other avian scavengers. I walked away mulling over what the birds had said and wondering if I could find a place where they serve a blood-red Morgon … and pigeon désossé in a light wine sauce.
Doug Cushman is a former Redding artist and author who now lives and works in Paris. He was born in Springfield, Ohio and moved to Connecticut with his family when he was 15 years old. While in high school he created comic books lampooning his teachers, selling them to his classmates for a nickel a piece.
Since 1978, he has illustrated and/or written more than 100 books for children and collected a number of honors, including a Reuben Award for Book Illustration from the National Cartoonists Society, New York Times Children’s Books Best Sellers, and the New York Public Library’s Best 100 Books of 2000. He enjoys hiking, kayaking and cooking (and eating!). Learn more about Doug, his art and his books at his Web site, http://www.doug-cushman.com/index.htm