We spent Friday — Vivian’s second birthday — on the town in Toronto. The highlight of this bright, bustling, beautiful city? Pidgeons.
Early in the morning we stopped at a coffee shop at Queen’s Quay for treats and caffienne, and Vivian made a real mess of her muffin. So we gathered up the crumbs and took them down to the Music Garden — possibly my favourite place in Toronto.
Drop one crumb, and a pidgeon comes. Drop two, and the pidgeon Bat Signal is activated, and they come swooping in from all directions. Vivian gathered a flock of a dozen or so with a tiny handful of muffin crumbs. She was entranced, laughing, drunk on her new power.
But things get better: if you run at the pigeons while laughing madly, flapping your toddler arms, and shouting “fly, fly,” they take off in grey whirls of wings. But they don’t go very far. You can chase them!
Clearly, turning two gives you power over the entire animal kingdom.
I bet some of those pidgeons had the first name Walter.