Tim & Chuck

Ch. 4. Casually Snow Whiting

With his normal light gray feathers paired with the darker gray ring somehow in the exact center of his neck, he could be any other pigeon in New York. But he was not. Because he was Fredrick.

By the first weeks of June, Tim and Chuck had settled quite nicely into an everyday routine. Tim really enjoyed coming home to a quiet house apart from Chuck's excited greetings, and more often than not Tim was able to catch up on his own passion projects now that he didn't share a house with the rest of his family.

But one day, Tim came to realize that in addition to Chuck, he also somehow attracted a 'pet' pigeon, Fredrick. And Tim still refused, after all of the jokes from his neighbors, to accept that Frederick was, in fact, another pet.

Fredrick seemed to live on the windowsill over the balcony, and had a tendency to stare eerily through the window, most of the time with his head tilted slightly to the left.

He had a normal pigeon-sized body, but an abnormally long neck and a very small head. With his normal light gray feathers paired with the darker gray ring somehow in the exact center of his neck, he could have been any other random pigeon in New York to show up on Tim's balcony. But he was not.

Because he was Fredrick.

Frederick first appeared, in an albeit unseemly manner, at Tim's balcony railing a little under a month from the day that Tim had moved in.

Frederick flew into the windowpane in a tizzy and the noise startled Chuck so much that he gave a strangled bark and went into panicked zoomies.

Chuck's bark in turn startled Tim so much from the living room that he accidentally shut the desk drawer on his finger while he was searching for his stapler.

At least he didn't happen to staple his finger, Tim thought wryly.

Upon some checking, Tim discovered a very discombobulated pigeon on his balcony, laying on his back in a stranded turtle pose, his legs sticking straight up in the air.

Tim would have been extremely worried, except that the pigeon twisted his head to take a look at the condo owner, otherwise rather unfazed by his current position and the events of the last five minutes.

Tim surmised that Frederick was not a very bright bird (not that he would know much about bird IQ), because everyday for the next week afterwards, Frederick proceeded to fly into the same window, each impact as hard as the first.

But after the fifth consecutive time that Frederick collided into his transparent archnemesis, Tim decided that it was time to take action; either his window was bound to break from the repeated trauma, or he would eventually find a dead pigeon on his balcony.

Neither option sounded ideal.

So Tim came up with a plot that he hoped would deter Frederick from hitting the window anymore. The next visit from Frederick, Tim set out a bowl of Cheerios on the balcony, hoping that it would give Frederick an idea of where to land whenever he came to visit.

The plan worked for a few days. Right up until it backfired, that is.

After giving Frederick Cheerios multiple times, mostly because Tim kept forgetting to buy proper birdseed, Fredrick had developed a rather nasty habit of resuming his pattern of flying into the windowpane.

It was almost as if it was Frederick's personal doorbell habit, an obnoxious reminder to Tim that he was there for his daily dose of Cheerios.

Tim couldn't decide if Frederick is the dumbest pigeon, or an evil genius, but either way the pigeon got his Cheerios. Tim had even tried putting out bird seed after about a week and a half of repeated window assaults. But while Frederick would eye the bird seed, more often than not, Tim watched Frederick reject it in favor of the Cheerios which made no sense to Tim. Somehow he had managed to give the pigeon an acquired taste for human cereal and therefore he didn't recognize a more natural option.