Trigger

Trigger

         The wind rippled my feathers as I soared gracefully south, across the picturesque urban skies of Lower Manhattan. The skyscrapers below me gleamed proudly in the bright sunlit morning,  and, several hundred feet below, the city buzzed energetically with life. I tried desperately to ignore the anxiously nagging lump growing rapidly in the back of my throat. I swallowed, but it only grew. I landed on one of the grey and boring office buildings, and ruffled my feathers in attempts to shake off the feeling, and again, it grew. I groaned loudly. My best friend, Kirke, saw me and flew over. He knew I flew south whenever I was worried.
         "What's wrong, Avice?" he asked me, concerned.
         "Oh, I don't know," I answered, trying to sound a bit more carefree than I felt. My trials were a lost cause. Even I could hear that by the tone of my voice. "It's just...that new law Remiel said was supposed to be taken into effect today." Remiel was the flock's main source of information. He knows all the right places that are interesting, and he knows what's going on when. He even knew how to read newspapers and such, a concept that was so foreign to the rest of us. As I turned to Kirke, I knew it was vital that he understand the importance of the situation, and that he was cautious about it. "I don't know what I would do if anyone was killed. What about Evelyn? She's only two months old! What would Angie say when she finds out her daughter was murdered? Evelyn's so precious and small!"
         Kirke shook his head, and I obviously hadn't succeeded in worrying him enough to be cautious. "Oh, Avice, you worry too much!! Nothing's going to happen. You really think fining people for feeding us is going to work? Fining is a waste of time. Nobody's going to pay attention to it. Don't worry. Nothing's going to change."
         I shook my head, unconvinced, but decided it wasn't worth debating. "Okay, I'll try." I smiled at Kirke unconvincingly. "C'mon," I said to him. "We should probably be getting back now."
         Kirke sighed. "Okay," he said reluctantly, and we headed north, back to our aviary.
         I decided to take a detour. It would be nice to fly down to where all the excitement happens, I thought to myself. So I dropped a couple hundred feet, and Kirke followed.
         "Where are you going?" he asked, barely catching up to me.
         "Oh, I thought it'd be fun to tour Castle Garden," I said, and smiled vaguely.
         We flew down, soaring past hundreds of people in the midst of their Monday morning routine, and finally came to rest on the dirty New York sidewalk. I listened to humans carry on conversations with one another, as I often did for my own amusement.
         "You know," said a tall, slim brunette business woman to a petite, dark-haired business woman, as she glanced at me critically. "I heard they were fining pigeon feeders."
         "Yes," said the other woman. "I've heard about that. Personally, I think it's a brilliant idea. Those pesky beasts need to be taken care of."
         To my intense relief, the first woman didn't seem to share the same opinion. She grunted unenthusiastically. Then, to my horror, she gave me a disgusted look and snarled, "I think they should kill them right away. Just shoot them. It's no different than game. Why not? They're are so annoying, and such a health hazard, like rats with wings."
         I turned to Kirke. He had frozen in shock and terror.
         I nudged him. "Let's go."
         We flew up to get away from the humans, and we ended up around the tenth floor of some random apartment building, talking about what we had heard.
         "You don't think they're really going to do that, do you?" I asked, concerned.
         "I don't know, she sounded pretty serious," Kirke said. Part of me was relieved that Kirke was worried, because then he would be more careful with his life.
         Just then, we saw our friend James flying above the street near us.
         "Hey, James!" Kirke called, gesturing for him to come closer to us.
         James changed his direction to come and talk to us.
         BAM!!!
         My eyes widened. From inside the apartment one floor below us, someone had shot James.
         James fell, down, down, down.....
         Kirke started forward to follow his friend.
         "No!" I shrieked, reaching out to stop my best friend. "Kirke, you'll get hurt. Let's go back to the Aviary!"
         Kirke thought for a second before turning around and following me back to the Aviary.
         The both of us came back sobbing from the tragedy of what we had just witnessed.
         Merle, the only black pigeon of any of us, flew towards us. "What's wrong?"
         "It's James!" I cried. "He's been killed!"
         "Killed?! How?"
         "Gather everyone. They all need to know," Kirke suggested.
         Within minutes, everyone was gathered in a semicircle formation in the cliff-like buildings that was our Aviary.
         "Okay, guys!" Merle shouted to get their attention. "We need to discuss something!"
         I explained the tragedy he had witnessed.
         When I finished, there was a collective gasp among the Aviary.
         "No!" exclaimed Remiel. "They wouldn't!"
         "Not James!" someone else said.
         Shikoba, our fellow pigeon with an excessive amount of feathers and was also known for being a little too serene in times of panic, rationalized, "Clearly, if your encounters were that close to one another, there is more than one person doing this. And, considering this person took action that soon after the law was passed, she seems pretty serious about killing us. Basically, this isn't going to stop anytime soon."
         The group was silent for a few moments as what Shikoba said processed in our minds.
         Finally, Evelyn said, "We need a name!"
         "Okay..." I began hesitantly.
         "How about 'The Guillotined'?" Angie suggested.
         "Cool!" Evelyn exclaimed.
         "Okay, so what are we going to do about this?" I asked The Guillotined. "We have to go out to get food, but we can't go out because we'll get shot."
         "I don't know..." said Keith, our woodpecker friend.
         "Whatcha guys talkin' 'bout?" Jemimah had just scampered up the building to join us. Jemimah was a mouse, but she was naïve enough to think she was a dove, and she belonged here.
         I sighed. "The new law regarding pigeon feeding. They want to murder us instead," I informed Jemimah wearily.
         Jemimah scuttled around in circles like her energetic self. "I can help! Ooooh, lemme help!!!"
I considered that for a moment. That was a great idea, as far as taking action goes.
"Okay, guys!" I announced. "I've got a plan." I explained to them my idea, and, to my delight, everyone agreed.
"We should do this tomorrow morning," I suggested.
Most of them agreed, so the next morning, I instructed Jemimah and led The Guillotined to the killer's house. The plan was an interesting one, and I couldn't be sure it would work. It was only for revenge, not for justice, and it wouldn't really solve their problem all too effectively, but it was something.
We arrived at the woman's house and decided to wait where she couldn't see us for the time being, so that she wouldn't be able to kill us if she felt the need.
We waited for Jemimah and his like to come. Not long after that, we heard the woman scream from inside her house, which was our queue. All of us flew in front of the window and simply watched as the business woman's house was dominated by hundred and hundreds of mice.
The woman looked horrified, and stood on top of her counter with a broom raised as a weapon in her hand.
The pantry was three feet from where the woman stood, and the door had been left wide open. With one swing of the broom, the killer sent a loaf of bread toppling to the ground.
This had gone better than I had hoped. I decided there was enough of us, and I motioned everyone to fly inside through the open window. We feasted on the loaf of bread as the woman attempted to whack the mice.
After a few minutes, she saw us and started trying to hit us instead. We flew at her, and a few of us managed to peck her face so she screamed in agony. Blood streaked on her face, and a few minutes later the woman's neighbor arrived to see what was going on. What she found was that most of the mice had disappeared, the woman had dropped her broom, and we had gone back to eating the bread.
The woman's neighbor stared confusedly at the scene for a while, then called the police. It had become evident to her what was going on. Her neighbor was feeding pigeons, which was against the law.
The neighbor told the police this, and she seemed satisfied with the answer she was given.
The woman, however, was too busy attempting to rid vermin from her house that she didn't even notice. This went on for a few more minutes, and then the police came and demanded a fine of two hundred dollars.
"NO!!!!!" The woman shrieked, enraged. "I have to come home and have these things come in and eat my food and I have to pay for it?!"
The police didn't buy it. He asked a few more times doubtfully for the fine, and each time watched the woman deny it stubbornly.
To our great delight, the police put handcuffs around her struggling wrists and took her away.
"Hurray!" We cheered after she had gone. "The killer is gone!!!"

Epilogue: Three weeks later

Kirke and I flew down to the streets of Lower Manhattan just as we had done weeks before.
"What do you want to do today?" he asked me.
I shrugged. "Oh, I don't know. Why don't we ask Angie what she wants to do?" I suggested, nodding at her.
She flew flawlessly and without worry down to where we stood.
"What do you think we should do today, Angie?" Kirke asked her.
"Well, I was thinking, since we don't have any bird killers or ridiculous laws to worry about, maybe we could go hang out on top of The Chrystler Building."
I nodded. "That sounds lke fun."
And with that, we flew east to The Chrystler Building.
All of The Flock was relieved when that horrible woman was arrested, and even more so now that there hadn't been any further trouble. It was rare that us pidgeons ever had to deal with troubles such as these. I felt very confident that it would be a long time before we ever had to deal with something like that again. I was so glad that pidgeons didn't have nearly as exciting lives as humans did. For now all we had to was attempt to prepare for the next event looming on the horizon.