Unresolved Issues With the Animal Kingdom: Pigeons

I was in New York City for the first time the summer before 8th grade. It was magical; the city was so new and different and exciting. My hometown couldn't hold a candle to its radiance. Unfortunately, there was a similarity:

Pigeons.

I loathe pigeons. There is not a single creature on this earth which I find as hideous as the pigeon, and they are everywhere on this planet. You cannot escape them. That is one of their most unattractive features-they have such vast numbers that there is no escape. They stare at you with their round, watery eyes, make that chilling cooing noise, and you can immediately tell that they are plotting something nefarious involving fecal matter.

Pigeons crap wherever they please, whenever they please, but only after eating something difficult to digest. Then they locate a target, usually someone doing something exciting, who is wearing an outfit that is either expensive, difficult to clean, or both. For instance, a pigeon will see a girl in the audience for the Today Show wearing a brand new white t-shirt and think to itself, "That violently green pesto I just consumed is making my tummy feel weird. It's time for it to move on. That pretty girl in white surely understands my sorrow." Then it will let loose and you are left covered in warm, green, stinking bird feces that will leave a horrible grey shadow on your shirt as a painful, permanent reminder.

The last offense I take with the psychology of pigeons is their (lack of) intelligence. Birds who sit on busy thoroughfares and do not fly away when approached by SUVs deserve to be crushed under the wheels of the vehicle. This is called "survival of the fittest" and rumor has it that's what makes the creatures of this earth maintain standards. These standards are important. After all, no one wants a dog that can't fetch, or a city populated by birds too stupid to use their God-given wings to save themselves from automobiles, particularly not me.

It's not just their behavior is off-putting, however. There's also the problem of their appearance. Once enough of these animals are crowded into an area populated by fools who feed them and garbage cans line the sidewalks, even the dumbest of the dumb survives. There are incidents of horrid inbreeding and terrifying accidents. This leaves us with deformed pigeons. Regular, oil-spill green birds are unattractive enough, but add goiters, extra toes, and bulbous tumors, then suddenly pigeons are infinitely worse. It may make me cruel, but I find deformed pigeons repulsive.

Unfortunately, there is no way to escape these vile creatures without moving to a remote, and likely undeveloped, part of the world, where the climate is too dramatic for lowly pigeons. That, or we use them to feed the world's hungry until we can effectively reorganize food distribution and solve world hunger. Perhaps I have a new life goal.