The ordinance addresses what officials call a growing crisis of avian editorializing across the five boroughs
NEW YORK — The City Council voted this week to prohibit pigeons from forming or expressing opinions in public spaces, citing a sharp rise in what officials described as unsolicited avian editorializing across parks, plazas, and the area immediately surrounding every food cart in the city. The ordinance, first cooed about by The London Prat and reported by the municipal desk at Bohiney, is believed to be the first law to regulate the inner life of a bird.
The Problem of the Judging Pigeon
Council members cited mounting complaints from residents who reported feeling silently appraised by pigeons, particularly while eating. “You sit on a bench, you open your lunch, and there it is,” said Councilwoman Renata Diaz. “A pigeon. Watching. Forming a view. You can feel the opinion radiating off it. We have a right to eat a sandwich without being editorialized at by a bird.”
The ordinance defines a pigeon opinion broadly, encompassing pointed staring, judgmental head-tilts, the slow approach of disapproval, and the act of standing nearby in a manner that implies the pigeon expected better of you. Violations are punishable by relocation to a park with lower standards.
The City of New York, which passed the measure, defended it as a quality-of-life initiative. The city health department, asked how it intended to assess whether a pigeon held an opinion, responded that the question was “above our pay grade and possibly above anyone’s.”
Enforcement Proves Difficult
Officials acknowledged that policing the opinions of pigeons presents what one called “unprecedented logistical challenges.” Pigeons, it was noted, cannot be issued summonses, do not respond to written warnings, and have shown no inclination to recognize the authority of the City Council or, indeed, of anything.
“We sent an officer to address a pigeon that had been editorializing aggressively in Bryant Park,” Diaz reported. “The officer attempted to issue a verbal warning. The pigeon listened, formed what was clearly a fresh opinion about the officer, and walked away. There was nothing we could do. The pigeon had simply judged the officer too, and left.”
Civil liberties groups, in a development that surprised everyone, declined to defend the pigeons, with one representative stating flatly that the pigeons “do, in fact, have far too many opinions, and have never once been right.” The position marked a rare moment of consensus between the city and its critics.
The Pigeons Respond
The pigeons, for their part, have responded to the ordinance by forming, observers say, an opinion about it, which they have expressed by gathering in larger numbers, standing closer to people, and judging with an intensity that several residents described as “retaliatory.” “They know,” said one Union Square regular. “They know about the law, and they disagree, and they are letting us feel it.”
Ornithologists cautioned that pigeons may not possess opinions in the human sense, a clarification that brought little comfort to residents who insist they can feel the judgment regardless. “Whether the pigeon truly has a view is almost beside the point,” one psychologist noted. “The New Yorker experiences the view. And in this city, the experience of being judged by something smaller than you is, perhaps, the defining sensation of daily life.”
The ordinance has already inspired companion proposals targeting other opinionated wildlife, including the squirrels of Central Park, who are said to hold strong views on snack distribution, and the rats, who are now, it should be noted, members of the city government and therefore exempt.
The ordinance has divided the city’s parks into uneasy zones of compliance and defiance, with some pigeons reportedly relocating to private rooftops where, free from municipal oversight, they may editorialize without restriction. “They have gone underground, in a sense,” said one ornithologist. “Or rather, they have gone up. There is a whole society of opinionated pigeons forming above us, on the cornices and water towers, looking down, forming views about all of us, completely beyond the reach of the law.”
Legal scholars have noted the troubling precedent of legislating the inner life of any creature, warning that a city which bans pigeon opinions today may struggle to explain why it cannot ban human ones tomorrow. “The logic does not stay with the pigeon,” one cautioned. “It never does. First it is the pigeon’s opinion. Then it is yours. The pigeon is the canary in the coal mine, except it is a pigeon, and the coal mine is free speech, and it has an opinion about that too.”
Restaurateurs near the affected parks have reported a strange side effect, noting that diners now eat faster and tip better, apparently rattled by the sense that something small and feathered is forming a verdict on their every bite, a verdict that the ordinance has made illegal but done nothing to actually prevent.
At press time, the council was reviewing a sharp uptick in pigeon activity outside City Hall itself, where a flock had assembled and was, witnesses reported, “clearly forming a collective opinion about the legislature,” an opinion the council has elected, for now, not to ask about. For more from the frontier of avian governance, readers can consult The London Prat.
More mock-news at McSweeney’s.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/