Distinctly Montana Magazine

47 w w w. d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m P IGEONS SHOW UP IN EGYPTIAN INSCRIPTIONS AND OLD HE- BREW MOSAICS. They were instrumental in both World War I and World War II, earning medals like the "Croix de Guerre" for their service. In the roaring twenties, when one Wall Street millionaire want- ed to share a hot stock tip with another investor, he'd send a pigeon with the message. Pigeons were bred for their intelligence, beauty, and their speed in racing. And if you lend any credence to the Good Book, it was the pigeon (the ancient Hebrew reads "of the pigeon type"), released by Noah, that discovered land after God's deluge. Humans and pigeons made a great team. Then, somehow, it all went pear-shaped. We abandoned the pigeon. We cast out our noble friends. In 19th-century North America, the passenger pigeon, once the most numerous bird on the continent, if not the world, were shot, trapped, blasted, or netted to extinction. Today's feral pigeons, collecting in the urban cliffs of New York City and points west, are descendants of the European rock dove. In those cities, at least, there is some tradition of feeding the birds in a public park or courtyard. But in Butte, America, the pigeons are a lot tougher than their big city cousins on the coasts. Butte pigeons face seemingly insurmountable ob- stacles to success, and yet somehow, through sheer will, they survive. Like the city they call home, Butte pigeons thrive in adversity. There they manage to propagate in astonishing numbers despite living in an environment that is, more often than not, entirely hostile to them. The first time I really noticed them was in a vacant building uptown. I was walking by one winter morning when I caught some motion through a window. It was a thin pigeon reeling drunkenly across the dusty floor. Now filled with a successful business, it was then a long-abandoned storefront. A small hole in the rafters just admitted pigeons, but prevent- ed egress. In the course of their working their way down the building, THE SECRET LIFE OF BUTTE'S PIGEONS Against the World: by JOSEPH SHELTON HALLIE ZOLYNSKI

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