Angels, Birds and a Pilot

             

            On Wednesday I got ready and rode down to the food bank. I had been told that they probably wouldn’t be open, but there were some things I needed to do anyway, so I thought I’d drive by there first. It turned out that they were open after all, and then I recalled, despite what Sue said, overhearing Joe say that he wanted his staff to have three solid days off this year, including Boxing Day, so that would have meant Thursday, Friday and Saturday, rather than Wednesday.

            On my way up the driveway to lock my bike, the first thing I heard was a guy that was leaning by himself against a blue garbage bin say, “Why doesn’t god let his angels come to take me home?”

            Assuming that there are angels and that he wasn’t talking about a journey of a few blocks; that seemed to me like a big production. If there were angels, wouldn’t they be a little too involved in the engineering and maintenance of the workings of countless stars, planets and such, to be able to spare even one for the transportation of individual humans?

            I got in a line-up that was not as long as the week before, where to my right was the lawn on the west end of the building that houses the food bank. Someone had tossed some pieces of bread on the grass and the pigeons were pecking away at a big piece when a sparrow, a third their size, quickly moved in, grabbed the piece and flew away with it. The elderly man behind me commented that it’s tough for pigeons in the city. I pointed out the sparrows and how well they’ve adapted, like the starlings, to the North American environment, even though they aren’t supposed to be here. I asked him if he knew how they first got here. A big, middle-aged guy, two places behind the elderly man, with a short, un-trimmed beard and short black hair that was receding on the sides, piped in that they escaped from experiments. I said that wasn’t it. What happened was that a couple of hundred years ago, a wealthy man in New York City thought that his contemplative walks in Central Park would not be complete if the greenery weren’t also home to all of the birds mentioned in the writings of Shakespeare. Because of this and other introductions, sparrows are now the most widespread birds on the planet. I don’t think life is that tough for a species that’s thriving.

            The conversation then shifted to other animals that have moved into Toronto from elsewhere. I said that I was surprised earlier this year to see a possum crossing Bathurst Street. At first I’d thought it was a dog-sized rat but that seemed impossible, so I looked up “dog sized animal shaped like a rat in Toronto” and discovered that over the last few years possums have made their way from the warmer climates in the southern States up to Toronto. I’ve read that they have a tough time of it though and get frostbitten faces. The big guy suggested that they will eventually die off then. I argued that I think they’ll survive frostbite. It’ll just be difficult for them. He said that they’ll adapt then. I answered that they won’t adapt right away to being immune to frostbite, because that would take thousands of years, but they’ll adapt behaviourally.

            I added that the coyote is another animal that’s come here from far away. The elderly man said that we don’t really encounter coyotes in our neighbourhoods though like we do raccoons. I agreed and added that Toronto has more raccoons than any other city in the world. I thought this was fairly common knowledge, but this surprised them.

            This led the bug guy to telling us about his experiences as a pilot in the Yukon. He said that he and a friend encountered six wolverines once, but it’s lucky that they aren’t as brazen as raccoons, because they shy away from people, for the most part.

            The Second Harvest truck arrived and so we had to shift the line-up to the other side of the door.

            After we’d moved, the big guy said that when he was up north, during times he wasn’t flying he would go hunting and that a lot of people carry “bear boomers” to scare bears away. He told us though that the problem was that the bear has to be a hundred meters away or more for the horn to work, because if it’s fifty meters away the sound will be thrown behind the bear, they’ll hear it behind them and be spooked to run towards you. He said that he preferred to just use a gun because the sound of that will scare the bear. I wondered then why they don’t just make an audio device that reproduces the sound of a gun. He didn’t know.

            The elderly man said that his girlfriend is from up north and he asked her once what happens when people encounter bears up there. Se told him that White people die but a Native would have a dog. I asked him if his girlfriend is Inuit and he said she’s half.

            The big guy pulled out a pack of smokes and offered me one. I shook my head. He still held out the pack as if he thought I wanted one but wouldn’t admit it. I assured him that I didn’t want one. I edged further away and lost the thread of the conversation.

            At about that point, I was among the next four people to be let in. I got number 21 then went to the supermarket to buy cat food and coffee before going home.

            When I came back two hours later the big guy found me and started chatting again. He pointed at the pigeons that were hanging around and getting tossed bread by food bank clients. We both agreed that people shouldn’t be feeding pigeons. I told him that I remember back in the early 80s when they used to sell live pigeons in Kensington Market along with other live poultry, and I suggested that it was more of an Italian thing to eat them. The big guy said he was Italian, but he’d never eat one. I looked at the pigeons near us in the driveway and said that they look like they might actually taste pretty good.

            I told him about the passenger pigeon and how they used to blacken the skies of North America less than 200 years ago before they were hunted to extinction. He wondered about the difference between passenger pigeons, carrier pigeons and homing pigeons. I told him that the passenger pigeon was a different species but that homing and carrier pigeons are the same thing. What I didn’t know until I looked it up later was that the homing pigeon and the pigeons walking at our feet are also of the same species and that the only difference is domestic breeding.

            The big guy had number 24, but we noticed that the elderly Chinese woman by the door also had the same number. He spoke to the door person about it and she tried to communicate with the old lady but she didn’t understand. She called out for someone who speaks Chinese and a young man in his thirties came forward. The old lady was told that she would have to get a new number because hers was from last week.

            I told the big guy that the old woman seemed confused two weeks before as well when she tried to get a turkey voucher and was told that one had already been given to her. He was suspicious and said that a lot of old people pretend to be confused in order to cut evoke sympathy and get what they want. I argued that this particular woman looks ancient and that it would be understandable if she were getting confused. He wasn’t convinced that she was necessarily as old as she looks because some people from “certain places” look older sooner.

            The big guy told me a bit about himself. He said that he has a master’s degree in engineering and has a commercial pilots license to fly many different types of airplane. He said that the only work for pilots tends to be up north. He mentioned flying for traffic reporters but that in the winter, stations tend to just use the cameras that are mounted on the highways. He complained that his qualifications are a handicap though when he’s looking for a job outside of his field.

            As we were chatting, he lit a cigarette. I tried to politely edge away from him while he was smoking, but he kept moving toward me until finally my number was called.

            Of the food selections, the stuff that stood out from the usual were a couple of Campbell’s Gourmet soups: a Thai tomato coconut and a butternut squash. There was a bag of Raisin Bran cereal, six eggs, and a litre of milk. There was a kid in his early teens handling the bread section. I suspect that he is Sue’s son, because she was nearby in the vegetable section, where there were several varieties of squash. I took the kabocha because they sit well in the oven for baking after being stuffed.

            There seemed to be a coincidental theme of flight in conversations happening at the foodbank this time around, from angels to birds to my chatty pilot friend.

            When I got home there was an email from the model coordinator at OCADU, offering me some bookings for January and February. I went to get the weekly planner I’d bought at Staples back in October, but I couldn’t find it. It might not be lost. I recently found the guitar tuner that I’d had to replace several months ago. It was in my undershirt drawer. Meanwhile though, I needed to organize my bookings, and though I could probably do it on my phone, I’m still comforted by hard copies of information. So that evening, for my bike ride I headed down to University north of Queen and bought a new planner, plus some notebooks for my upcoming courses in January.

            On the way home, along Queen Street, I suddenly got the idea of a present that my daughter might like and that I could afford, and so I stopped someplace in particular to look for it. I found something along the lines of my idea and bought it.

            Once I was home, I put together the folding box from the post office, filled it up with the stuff I’d bought for Astrid and rushed to the post office to mail it. It was too late for anything to get to Montreal by mail before Christmas, but I sent it by express anyway, so she’d get it after the weekend.

            I watched the second episode of the latest Doctor Who season. Again, I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll just say that there are new insights into what makes a certain race of scary robots tick and the story and the effects were spectacular.