You pause for a moment, take a deep breath and steel yourself, and then stretch your arms out and open your fists. It’s like a scene from Hitchcock’s
The Birds: dozens of feathered bodies smash into you like missiles and twisted, scaly claws take a painful grip on your arms, your shoulders, your hair. Wings flutter and flap as the pigeons--some of which bear crusted and oozing wounds or mangy, mite-infested plumage--struggle and scrabble to get their share of the corn kernels you hold in your open palms.
Believe it or not, this is one of the most popular tourist activities in Venice. Piazza San Marco, or St. Mark’s Square, the most famous landmark in Venice, is blanketed in cooing pigeons when it’s not flooded, and countless tourists pay a dollar a pop for a small bag of corn and the chance for a few moments of picturesque pigeon attention. The city of Venice gives out steep fines for feeding pigeons anywhere but here, and only a select few are allowed to sell birdseed here at all. Immigrant street vendors settle for selling imitation Prada handbags and laser pointers on blankets in the alleyways; they never dare challenge the reign of the licensed birdseed vendors of Piazza San Marco, perhaps for fear of retaliation from a shadowy birdseed Cosa Nostra.
The licenses to sell birdseed in St. Mark’s Square are few and far between and were apparently given to disabled war veterans by the government to enable them to earn a decent living. It’s a family business: the coveted licenses are handed down from generation to generation and grant the right to perform a fairly lucrative and undemanding job--sitting in one of the world’s most beautiful locations at an umbrella-shaded cart, selling a product with no return policy (or, for that matter, any customer dissatisfaction--what you see is what you get), occasionally shooing pigeons away with a stick, and heading home at dusk when the pigeons lose their appetite and fly home to roost.
Inevitably, when you have thousands of tourists a year paying money for the privilege of feeding pigeons, you end up with too many pigeons and too much pigeon shit on your statues and Renaissance architecture. I’d heard rumors that the city of Venice had been feeding the pigeons contraceptives. The only documentation I could find on this story was a city regulation: Title 9, Article 82 states that the mayor (counseled by the Sanitation Authority and the head city veterinarian) has the power to order special measures aimed at maintaining “numerical consistency” of the pigeons in the city.
In the fall of 1999, I interviewed three of the mysterious birdseed vendors--Laura, Ennia, and Luigino--and learned about their ideas on pigeon population control, rumors about just how “numerical consistency” was achieved, and their feelings about the little flying rats themselves.
Laura, 52 years old, from Venice
Do you have another job, or just this one?
The job of being a housewife. . . I mean, what can you say? We've always got that after work, right?
How long have you been doing this job?
Here? 32 years.
32 years? That's a lot.
I think my retirement will be well-earned!
So how come you decided to do this?
I wasn't the one who decided! This is the family business. My grandfather, my grandmother, my mother. . . and then the only one who could do it was me. And so here I am.
So how many generations has it been?
I'm the third.
What do you think of the pigeons?
Oh, I think they're good.
You like them?
Yes, I like them. I play with them.
And what do you think of the plan to eliminate the pigeons?
Yes, yes, I think it's a good plan. Not completely, but in the next few months they're going to starve to death. And if they took away half of them, the few that remained would be able to survive wonderfully. And you know, they say that they're sick when actually they're dying of hunger, the poor things. It's because what we give them isn't enough.
But I thought the plan was to give them contraceptives?
They've given them contraceptives, but without having much effect. Not here in the Piazza, though. Because there's kids here, you can't put out contraceptives here. It's bad for the kids.
So you think it's wrong to get rid of all the pigeons?
All of them, no, you can't get rid of all of them, because it wouldn't be Piazza San Marco anymore. But a good half of them you could. Yes, a good half of them. However many it would take to repopulate themselves next year. Look, there's so many little ones, eh? Look, look, there's a little tiny one, there's a little one, that's a little one, look, there's so many babies, eh? Look here, look, look, you see them? See how little they are? Look, look. . .
So the contraceptives don't work?
Not very well, I don't think they work very well.
(Some pigeons land on the birdseed cart and Laura beats them off it with a stick.)
You have to hit them. If not, they'll eat everything.
Do you think it's better to eliminate them with this contraceptives plan or directly, with poison?
I don't know if it's worth the trouble to give them contraceptives. But they've also tried with hawks and birds of prey. . .
Ennia, 59 years old, from Venice
Do you have another job?
No, no, no.
How long have you been doing this job?
Since my father died. Because before me, he owned the license. Since 1982. It's already been 17 years now.
So why did you decide to do this job?
Because when he died I had to take the license, otherwise they'd take it away.
So it's a family business?
Yes, a family business, I inherited it from my father. Before this I was a housewife.
And what do you think of the pigeons? Do you like them?
I like all animals. All of them, indiscriminately, I have cats at home, a dog, a turtle. All housepets, especially dogs. I've always had them since I was six years old. And pigeons are animals.
So you don't think they're dirty?
No, no, they're not dirty. . . And they're not sick, either, as public opinion would have it, the public opinion that created all this confusion and fear in people. The Comune should do like it used to, and net the pigeons once a year, getting rid of the oldest pigeons and naturally the oldest ones can also be the sickest ones, sick in the sense that they might have a broken leg… Here they just came and took away three dead ones because kids were running around and kicking them. Yes, this happens every day, at least 10, 15 pigeons die like this every day because people run, they crush them, and they fall over dead as a doornail when they get hit. So I think that before winter comes, I'd say around November when there aren't that many people around, there seem to be more pigeons but there really aren't. If you come back here in a month, it should be around the time period when the Comune should put out their nets and get rid of some pigeons so that even if there are only a few left, at least those few have enough to eat and don't die, because if we see them dead around here it's not because they're dead of illness. They die of hunger and of the cold. Because if there's a lot of them, the places that they go to sleep aren't big enough, so the ones underneath are covered by the ones on top. So the ones that are underneath live because they're warm. The ones on top freeze to death. And that's why pigeons get sick and die. But not because of illnesses. They die because there's not enough food and because they're cold. . . . There, see? See where those people are talking? See that one there, there's another dead one, and that's the fourth dead one since I got here today. That one got kicked, someone kicked it, it's lying there dead on the ground. It's not true that it died because it was sick, and now they're hungry, they're so hungry mostly because yesterday there was flooding all day. And so the pigeons didn't eat, and today they're hungry.
So there's a lot of them--
There's a lot of them, a lot, and they're really hungry, and people say that they're attacking instead of coming to land on you nicely, they attack when they see someone with a bag [of food] because they're hungry. Yesterday it was flooding, the flood season's starting now. And there will be many days of flooding. So this is the time, now that the foreigners are gone, the season's almost over, to make the selection, to get rid of some. Because you have to consider that in March there will be the babies, the newly hatched ones. So we have to make room for the newly hatched ones and take away the oldest ones.
But how do they do it?
They do it with nets. They come here in the early morning, they throw the nets down over there and throw some grain on top, then the oldest ones see that there's food and they go into the nets. Then these net guys close the nets and take them away. And there's much fewer left. The newly hatched baby chicks are left, but they'll live, because those little ones will be able to find food. And they'll find room to sleep. Otherwise they'll all die, old and young, of hunger and of cold. Because in winter, there's not enough room to sleep and there's not enough food.
I didn't know that. I knew that there was a plan with contraceptives.
No, no, no, that plan was never put into motion. Anyway, I think it's not a good plan. The best thing to do is what they've always done, because this thing with the nets, they've done this for years and years and years, and I've been here for thirty years and every year there've been those people who take away the pigeons with the nets. How they meet their end, I don't know. But they get taken away. They get taken away and the ones that remain, too bad for those who get taken away, naturally they'll die in some nasty way, but if they stayed they'd die in some nasty way anyway, because they'd die of hunger or of cold.
Because there's no room.
Yes, exactly, because there's no room. So then the little ones are born and then the little ones find enough to eat, and they find places to sleep. But if we did what those people say to do, the ones who say we shouldn't do this, at the beginning of the year we'd find ourselves with, instead of a certain number of pigeons, with double the number of pigeons. That's it, we know very well that where one can eat, where there's room for one, there's not room for ten; there you go.
So you agree with this plan?
Yes, the thinning-out with the nets, yes, I agree with it. But they have to do it at the right moment. Not summer, because when it's hot even if they sleep on the ground they won't die, because it's hot and there's enough to eat because of the tourism. So before winter, because winter is when all the pigeons die. From hunger and from cold. So it's right that they should capture them, take them away, and leave just the youngest ones. But see how hungry they are? They come here and create terrorism in the newspapers that say that they're sick, that people get sick, that they carry diseases. . . We've been here for a hundred years, and nobody's ever died of illnesses from the pigeons, not in my family, nor in any of my colleagues' families, and there's 19 of us. Pigeons are not sick and they don't carry diseases. They only get sick when they're really hungry. That's it. Those are the facts. So if they take them away, they won't get sick and they won't freeze to death. Those are the facts.
Luigino, age 55, from Murano
How many years have you been doing this?
Many.
Many?
Yes.
How'd you decide to do it? Is it a family business?
Yes, a family business. My mother used to do it. She got really old and so I took her place.
And your mother was the first to do it? Or did your grandparents do it too?
Yes, my grandparents too. Once this license was only given to people injured in the war. It was a job they only gave to people injured in the war, to give them the chance to make a little something. They'd give them a little packet to make a little money to survive.
Do you have another job, or just this one?
Oh, not me. I don't work any more, this is enough. Here I already work eight or nine hours.
A day?
In the mornings I work a certain number of hours. And in the afternoon I come here at one, and then keep working until I feel like stopping.
And what do you think of the pigeons? Do you like them?
The pigeons, they're a symbol. They're the symbol of Piazza San Marco.
Not the lion?
No, the pigeon is the symbol of Piazza San Marco. Just think, if you took away the pigeons from Piazza San Marco, do you think it would be the same Piazza San Marco? No. Cage the flying pigeons and it's not San Marco at all. The pigeons that fly, that eat, with the people who have fun, who smile, children, everything, in short they bring happiness. Unfortunately, there's just some people who do terrible things, who tie the pigeons' beaks shut with wire. They tie their legs together, they pull out their feathers, they're criminals! They're people who really don't love animals.
I'm sorry, sir, I don't think I understood that. You're saying there are people who--
There are people who tie their legs together, their feathers, their beaks so that they can't eat.
Do they just do it to be mean?
No, because now they come here. They come here because they have fun, it must be fun for them. They have fun. . . 2000 lire [about $1] is not very much. Everyone has 2000 lire. Everyone can afford to spend 2000 lire. You understand how--
And what do you think of the plans to get rid of the pigeons?
They can't get rid of the pigeons. Because this is Piazza San Marco. Without pigeons, it wouldn't be the Piazza. Get it? Like I told you, it's not the lion. Lions are made of marble. These are real pigeons, they fly, they amuse people, no?
So you think it's not possible?
No, no, it’s not possible. Even if I didn't sell birdseed here. It's not possible because the pigeon is the emblem of Piazza San Marco. Because they have fun, they laugh, they do everything. Without pigeons, Piazza San Marco is nothing, nothing.
But you know that there are people who say that the pigeons are dirty, that they're sick?
There're more dirty people than pigeons! There're more people who don't wash. But a pigeon, you know what it'll do when it sees a pool or a well full of water? It will wash itself underneath with its wings, and when it rains the pigeon will lift up its wings and wash underneath. The pigeon. Certain people are dirtier than pigeons. Humans, they can wash themselves. But pigeons can't.
So you don't think that pigeons are dirty, that they're sick, dangerous?
Sick, we're all sick. Pigeons and people both. We're all sick. Up until now pigeons have existed for thousands of years. They've just found now that they carry diseases. I don't get it. Now, all of a sudden, they carry diseases.
It's a kind of paranoia.
You know who carries diseases? I don't know about you, but those foreigners who come here, who sell drugs, who do that kind of stuff. They carry diseases. Not pigeons. Pigeons eat birdseed. What do you want pigeons to eat? Pigeons are not sick. The ones who are sick are the ones who want to kill the pigeons. Who else, I don't know. Pigeons get stuff dirty, we agree on that. But they clean stuff up, we even pay taxes for that.
