Elephants and Pigeons…Oh My

Oh, my God, I shouted, as my wife, Barbara, and I were watching a taped report of President Bush’s press conference. “Did you see that? A bird just crapped on the president’s shoulder.” A small white glob landed on W’s left shoulder. He seemed to react to it slowly, yet a good bit faster than when he initially informed us about 9/11. He didn’t seem bothered, just glanced at it briefly, then flicked it off with his bare hand as if he were used to it, causing me to imagine a new version of that John Denver oldie, “Bird Dung On My Shoulder Makes Me Happy,” before concluding that maybe he just figured he was so deeply entrenched in it now, why worry about a couple of ounces more? Though certainly, he must have been disappointed that his red alert warning rhetoric to the reporters that their children were in danger from terrorists may have only scared the crap out of a bird. The camera then swing to the somewhat nondescript little pigeon, obviously not only unaware of the significance of his act, but of everything else in his environment, except for spilled French fired, cats, and rampaging raptors. It’s a pigeon for God’s sake, the most commonplace and maligned of all our avian allies, those ravenous eating machines that swarm over people—sometimes with Hitchcockian intensity—in Central Park and the famous squares of Europe.

But perhaps we have grossly misjudged and mistreated this impressive bird (they served as messenger carriers in combat in WW’s I and II, and NYC brought in falcons to rub them out a few years ago). After all, this particular little creature had done something that none of the Democrats could accomplish. Votes schmotes! Vetoes schmetoes! He just took matters into his own wings. Disregarding menacing Secret Service Men and machine gunners on the White House roof, this feathery fighter bomber swooped down and dumped his ebony and ivory load on target, this finally avenging an angry and frustrated world that has been the dumping ground for W’s misguided, mistaken and mispronounced policies for the past 6 ½ years.

So impressive was this act that I feel we should consider making this former war hero the symbol of the Democratic Party. I never have understood the logic of having a donkey occupy this prestigious position in the first place. And what sense does it make for the anti-conservation Republicans to have the majestic, powerful, but disappearing elephant for their symbol. Of course, if we could somehow acquire the elephant for ourselves, that would be even better than the pigeon. And oh, if elephants could only fly. They would still be digging for W. but that’s not going to happen, so let’s return to the pigeon and reality.

First, we’d have to play up the pigeon’s being a veteran of two ears and naturally compare that to the defer-and-run Neocons who started the Iraq War, but who infamously managed to avoid serving in any wars themselves. In fact, we might consider starting a simultaneous campaign to make the chicken the symbol of the Republican Party, except that in respect, a pusillanimous pachyderm is really the more appropriate symbol, because if there is one thing these guys can legitimately lay claim to, it is the elephant-sized balls when it comes to lying, or more specifically, denying a statement, even if you show them a videotape of themselves saying it. In fact, elephantine balls is a bit lacking in descriptive puissance. I’m thinking that the perfect symbol for this group is an elephant with scrotal elephantiasis. While of course, some consideration should naturally be given to the “lyin’” (lion) with Deferment Dick being the Lyin’ King.

But back to the proud pigeon, who, let’s remember, is mainly qualified, not just because of his history of military service to his country, but because he dropped a load on George W. Bush. Whereas most other birds would have taken the easy way out and waited for a statue to be erected, this bird dropped it up close and personal. In fact, I like to imagine him screaming, as he began his dive, banzai-like, while W struggled to complete a two-syllable brain-twister, “For me to poop on!” (Quotation used with permission from Bob Smigel / Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.)

Perhaps, most important of all is the fact that the pigeon can actually be more than s symbol. If these birds can be trained to carry messages, they can certainly be trained to perform an even more significant “doodie,” so to speak: Dropping deuces on Neocon lie-spewers, illustrating that even though both are full of it, at least the pigeon’s serves a noble cause.

Power to the Pigeon!