The boy steps through the crowd of pigeons feeding in the Town Square, each stride slotting into a space as the birds mill around uncaring, as though they can't see the intruder in their midst.
A puppy bounds in, all lolling tongue and soft fur and enthusiasm, and despite his gentle soul, the pigeons fly. Having flown they scatter, reshuffle their flock, and settle again, in new patterns, new distributions to peck at the tourist-scattered corn and discarded sandwiches. A young family advances, with a wobble-wheeled buggy full of impatient wailing to the fore. Again the pigeons fly, scatter, reshuffle, resettling in the wake of this latest disturbance.
Mouselike, an archetypal librarian diffidently creeps across the cobbles. In her averted eyes we can read the unspoken promise that she shall one day whip off her spectacles, untangle her bunned-up hair, and fly headlong through the window wearing nothing more than a magic cape, thigh boots and a studded leather G-string. Today, she is demur, unremarkable, unthreatening; yet the pigeons flee at her approach nonetheless.
Lunchtime people-watchers, posing as office-workers engrossed in their lawful business of eating packed lunches, peer over their wholegrain and Tupperware horizons, eyes busily tracking the birds' and the intruders' movements across the square.
The boy returns, retracing his steps through the flock. Again the pigeons ignore him, and the people-watchers munch on, noses down amongst the picalilly and peanut butter.
I often wondered; now I know. To not scare the pigeons, one must be invisible. Yet I can see the boy.
When I walk away through the feeding flock, not a feather stirs. No-one watches me leave, except the smiling boy.
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