There’s something in the mad, red eyes of a pigeon that makes you realize that they’re just a breadcrust or two away from committing bloody Hitchcockian mayhem. Those people you see feeding the birds in parks are just barely holding them in check. Or perhaps they hope to have a slightly better chance of survival when the inevitable avian revolution comes. Little do they know that their future feathered overlords have come to associate their faces with food…
When the birds try to overthrow humanity, the battle will probably start here in Ketchikan Alaska. My wife and I headed out from the cruise ship on the morning of July 2nd with a mission: we were going to find some writing paper!
It was kind of strange. We’d decided to leave our computers at home, but we each had things we wanted to write down before they were forgotten. Unfortunately, none of the shops on board sold simple notepads, and there wasn’t any ship’s stationary in the little desk/vanity in the room. We had some scratch paper which served us for the first day or two, but by the time we reached our first port we knew that we needed something better.
When we walked off the gangway, we turned left, which led us away from the tourist district and into the working downtown dock area of Ketchikan. Less than a mile from the dock, we spotted an office supply store across the street. Unfortunately, it was a rather busy street and there wasn’t a good crosswalk. So we went exploring. We wandered for a bit before we found a place where we could double back and pick up a pair of plain notebooks, and one of the little places we found was a pier-side park.
In addition to the benches and tables and trashcans, there were two of these feathered fiends. They had absolutely no fear of me walking up to them, camera clicking. I got within three feet before I realized that any further approach might be met by flashing beaks and claws… We retreated, limbs and extremities intact, to the safety of the stationary shop and eventually the ship.