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A Bird

Melville can't sleep. It's the same nightmare; the pigeon whom he trained on his roof will not leave him alone.

Whether he is working at his computer, or out on a blind date, the pigeon interferes.

Last year at his graduation from the Bronx Science Academy, Melville tried to shoot him with an Uzi, but nothing came of it.

Melville woke up exhausted and went to do some yard work outside, when he noticed the pigeon above him.

Melville put on his Yankee hat just in case the pigeon had any ideas.

Melville calls up Winnie, his old girl friend.

She says, "If this is about that rat on wings, I don't want to know about it. You are a genius and all you worry about is that damn bird."

Winnie hangs up abruptly. Melville, all sweated up, picks out a psychiatrist from the Yellow Pages but is too embarrassed to call him.

Running hysterically down Amsterdam Avenue, he walks into a store-front church nearby where people are speaking in tongues.

"I need help. I can't take this bird."

A young deacon in a "Jesus" sweatshirt, about twenty, says gently, "It must be a demon, a dirty bird… You need deliverance."

"Yes, I do, please deliver me."

"I can't, only God."

"Sure, God, anything…"

"Do you renounce the dirty bird?"

"Of course I do."

"And all the unclean spirits?"

"Sure."

"In the name of Jesus… it's gone."

"Thank God."

"But you must keep praying. Come back."

As Melville walks out of the church, he sees the same pigeon out there on the pavement. Melville goes into a drug store to buy rat poison.

He goes up to the ledge and the roof. He scatters the rat poison around the ledge. The pigeon comes close, but Melville loses control and falls off the roof. The pigeon flies over to him.

Even at the morgue and at the funeral, the pigeon was there.

Shortly afterwards, the pigeon gets lost in a manhole.

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