Vivien, Patron Saint of Pigeons

Today, I had to take care of some cats for a vacationing NYCer, so this meant that I had to brave the snow, slush and Lake Erie-sized mud-puddles in the process. Because today is the Saint Patrick's Day parade, I had to get out early, before all the streets were blocked off on the east side of town where my client lives.

After I had returned to the west side of town, I decided to reward myself for having beaten all the traffic chaos and went to Starbux for a coffee and cookie. While I was there, I met a German woman who was also having a coffee. She told me that she had a pigeon with a broken wing in her bag and asked me what she should do with it. The bird was resting comfortably in a clear plastic bag on the floor and was wrapped snugly in a wool scarf. According to this woman, she had picked up the bird off the sidewalk about one week ago. It was eating and drinking, but it couldn't fly and its wing was cocked at an abnormal angle. I told her that a veterinarian might be willing to patch it up, but since there were plenty of pigeons in NYC, that was not guaranteed.

After this, we got to talking and she told me that she is homeless and lacks the resources to bring the bird to a vet. The bird did not seem to be in obvious pain or discomfort, so I decided there was little that could be done, unless a veterinarian became involved, so I listened to her for awhile. I asked her if she was prepared to keep the bird as a companion, but never received a definitive answer to that question.

She is schizophrenic, she said, 65 years old, lives on the streets on the west side of Manhattan and her name is Vivien. She once owned a business, although I am not sure what she did or when she had it or if her business was in America or Germany .. instead, she was more interested in talking about Helmut Kohl and that he tried to kill her.

She has never had a husband or family. She told me that many men want to kill women, either by giving them diseases or by beating them, that men didn't die, they instead disappeared to an "underground" from where they try to kill women, beginning with those women who were closest to them.

Then she told me that there is a difference between emotions and feelings .. that emotions were sexual whereas feelings were "from the heart" -- altruistic acts such as caring for pigeons. Vivien took a conversational detour by running down a list of pigeons she had cared for previously, and also mentioned that she feeds the pigeons on the west side -- carefully, of course, so she doesn't get a ticket. She then went on to say that people who live on Mars and Venus are without emotions, that they relied solely on feelings and rationality and our world would be a better place if the people here lacked emotions.

When I asked her what brought her to America from Germany, she said that her horoscope told her that she needed to come here to get back "on the right path", that her path in Germany was going in the wrong direction.

She also told me that she bathes every day, that this morning, she took a bath in the snow, that the water was too cold to bathe in. She went on to say that she only asks for money until she gets enough to survive on for that day, that she doesn't want to bother people after that. She also said that she eats well, unlike most people in the city. I was surprised, but she said again, "I don't eat much, but I do eat very well."

She was dressed in black sneakers, a green shirt, sweater, blue jacket and long oversized black wool coat, a very expensive black wool scarf and hat on her head (it's truly amazing what people discard in Manhattan!). She was very polite and well-spoken, and had a charming command of English which, along with her unusual philosophy and outlook, made her an interesting conversational partner.

The last I saw of her, she was wading through the large snowbank, carrying the bag with the pigeon in it back to her grocery cart filled with objects, which she had left on the street corner because the snow banks were too tall to push it through (her grocery cart had earlier been carefully avoided by the snowplows .. a random act of kindness?). I hope to meet her again.