Pigeon Kids

Part 1

Once upon a time, there was a school. It was a floating school, buoyed on the hopes and dreams of its students. In the black sea of desolation and despair, they triumphed above adversity.

It all started 33 and a half years ago in a humble concrete pipe in the middle of a bustling city. Picture for yourself a tiny cluster of shivering children huddled around a Coleman camp stove. It was the dead of winter, and the snow was coming down in drifts. A silhouette appeared at the end of the pipe. "I could only find three pigeons. The rest are hiding under the bridge until spring." A deep sadness permeated the air, and, though no sound was made, a silent sobbing seemed to echo in the dark pipe. The children knew this would be their last meal until the first March thaw. Silently, they began plucking and cooking the pigeons. Maybe they could find some spoiled chicken in a restaurant garbage can. The old lady with the rabid cats always offered them milk as they passed her apartment on their way to the park. Unfortunately, they were all lactose intolerant. Little Pauli was unusually good at getting food from strangers, since he only had one arm. Ironically, he couldn't carry back enough to feed them all. Marvin had sharpened a stick to kill pigeons, so he offered to kill one of the rabid cats, but Shep, the oldest of the group, remembered that the last kid that ate a rabid cat had to have his head cut off and his brains analyzed. Last winter, the children tried to live off of acorns in the park, but the squirrels proved to be a fiercer foe that they had anticipated. Fortunately, the blood poisoning was easily treated with turpentine. Of course, they could always beg in front of restaurants, but the restaurants were in the territory of another group of street children�a clan of mean, bloodthirsty children that had no qualms about eating rabid cats. So the children had to hunt pigeons for food in their own neighborhood. Thus, they were called...the Pigeon Kids.

Continue on to Part 2...