Part 1: Pigeons
In our town there is a pigeon problem. At the train station there are signs everywhere, grimly warning that it is an offence to feed these scraggy little birds, these rats with wings. That it is DANGEROUS for them to exist, it is unhygenic. "If you like feeding birds, get a canary," the signs say. There are a lot of pigeons in our town.
You see their corpses every now and then, or the odd mangy feather fluttering, flightless, on the pavement. Ingrained advertising slogans that haunt your waking life come back to you:- "Why do you never see baby pigeons?". Pigeons are everywhere. People walk stooped in the city centre now, constantly crouching, protecting themselves from the threat of the pigeons and their waste.
A solution is needed. So the County Council sat down in their hall, and thought. There is no Pied Piper for Pigeons, we know this. We must have a sensible solution. Poison? We cannot poison the pigeons, for then we poison ourselves. We cannot poison the pigeons, for then we would be petitioned by the activists. Oh, they hate the pigeons as much as us, but they have so little else to do with their lives. Shooting? We cannot shoot the pigeons, for we may shoot people by mistake and then we'd be in the shit. We cannot shoot the pigeons, for it is everso noisy and not very efficient (but fun it _is_ fun, dontcha think?). We cannot shoot the pigeons, for then we would be petitioned by the activists. Oh, they hate the pigeons as much as us, but they have so little else to do with their lives. A hawk? It's cheap... it's effective... it's natural...
What a good idea, they all think, and munch on their chocolate Hobnobs, and sup on their Earl Grey tea. What a very good idea.
So in our town there is a hawk to deal with our pigeon problem. Well, an ornothologist friend says that it's more of a Buzzard than a Hawk, despite it's name. But the fact remains.
Now, for some reason, it was publicised as a good and natural thing that the hawk, as everybody knows, despite it's training, will go for the easiest targets amongst pigeon- kind. The easiest targets. The easiest targets are the young, the old and the weak. The prime target among that line-up is the weak.
Our hawk kills weak pigeons. Our hawk does not kill strong, virile, fast pigeons. The strong, virile, fast pigeons survive. They breed. They have strong, virile, fast children. Who, in turn, have strong, virile, fast children. They get stronger, y'know. We're breeding a monster race of pigeons. We are breeding pigeons that will only get stronger. That will only get bigger, and smarter, and faster. One day they'll all be stronger than the hawk, one day they'll hunt the hawk down and kill it.
And then they will come for us. They will come quickly, a squealing and squawking mass of beaky anger, and they will scratch our eyes out and carry our young away by the hair for a bloody feast of victory. A shower of excrement from the evil beasts shall rain down upon us, and as the pretty girls tear at their sodden and sticky follicles in desperation, the pigeons shall swirl down and unbalance them from their stilletoed world, snapping their frail legs, opening their shins with their spiky shards of bone. There will be chaos and anarchy in the streets as people run screaming, viscous red liquid covering them from head to toe, and the cry of the pigeons shall soon change from that of war, to that of unpitying laughter.
And the pigeons shall rule the earth.