The Animal Kingom: The real Kings of NY

I love the random things I encounter in New York. For instance, you already know that I'm not exactly an "animal dude"...i dont like petting horses, squirels annoy me, i despise cats...dogs are about the only animals i rep with and even they arent my best friend. This makes me kinda leery when it comes to animals and I react to them in weird ways. Some even give me nightmares. I've told many of you about my nightmare, while living in Atlanta, of some spiders that crawled out the cereal box, into my cereal bowl and swam in the milk, mocking me. Many of you read about my Floridian nightmare involving a lizard I trapped in my guest room (its the third story in the post I believe).


Well, the interesting thing about NYC animals is that they arent afraid of humans. Rats runs the city. Squirrels will jog along side you like there's an invisible leash and you're taking them for an afternoon walk. The cats are mangy and moody. None of the dogs are trained. It's literally a zoo. You ever seen that scene in Madagascar where Alex, Mellman and Gloria were roaming Manhattan streets chasing after Marty? That wouldnt surprise me if it happened in real life...seriously, if when I left work, I saw a lion, giraffe and hippo looking for a zebra, I'd simplyrun across the street and keep it movin, but I wouldnt be like "how is this possible"...animals act like this is their domain around these parts.

This is all a long, convoluted way to get to my experience this morning, walking to the train. You can enter Bedford station by either walking up a steep hill and entering on Grand Concourse or going under an underpass. Its the summer, I'm obese, so I typically choose the underpass. But the underpass is unequivocally, inarguably the domain of the pigeons. The nooks and ledges are their homes and the cement that us humans walk on is their toilet. pure and simple. and they mosey around on the ground, often cutting off your path, the way toddlers, geezers and blind people do.

This morning a particular one straight gangsta'd me out of my path and then stopped as i sidestepped it, like it had a problem with me. This really concerned me, since I put absolutely nothing past an animal in NYC. Part of me thinks that rats mug young women at knife point when no one is looking. Anyways, this pidgeon is staring me down, but I keep it movin because I'm not really tryin to get into a scrap with this fowl, specifically since its hot and ultra-specifically since I'm about to head under the underpass where his crew is camped out. I'm a writer, not a fighter and I'm also not tryin to be rollin around on the cement covered in their ish. So I swallow my pride and keep going, but as I pass him, I'm lookin at the pidgeon out the corner of my eye because I dont wanna be caught by surprise if it chooses to hit the Kid with a sucker punch or somethin.

Here's where you know I've lost it tho and that these animals have really gotten in my head. As I pass the pidgeon and enter the underpass, the light changes and all of sudden the pidgeon's shadow gets ENORMOUS. This causes me, a grown, supposedly sane man to violently turn around with balled fist as I yell, "Yo!!!!!!!" In a moment of insanity I truly thought this pidgeon had morphed into some monster-pidgeon the size of an elephant and was about to pimp slap me with his gigantic wing. Straight-up, my heart was racing and everything.

When I turned around and finished yelping, sure the pidgeon was still ice-grillin me, but it was still the size of just a regular ol pidgeon. So I calmed down, unclinched my fists and briskly walked by the rest of his gang into the station. I was kinda embarrassed, specifically since the pidgeon's smarmy crew was heckling me. I don't know, for some reason, the way they were flapping their wings just had this mocking-air about it. it might have just been me.

To make matter worse, not more than 30 seconds after the train doors closed, a bum was hawking ONE unopened tube of Krazy Glue. This quietly sent me through the roof, since all I want out of my bums is a racket that begets some forethought and guile. WHY THE EFF WOULD I NEED KRAZY GLUE??!?!?!?!!!!! And is their a product that can more conclusively indicate that it was stolen? Bum, you obviously stole that unopened Krazy Glue, but it was the wrong product to steal, as no one sitting on a train is trying to repair a piano stool.

Whatevs.