Keen, greedy, and somewhat clueless eyes peer up at me from the pavement. Watching its plump, bedraggled figure traipse an abstract pathway of figure eights and backtracking squiggles, my first instinct is to recoil. I find it so truly… terrifying to lay eyes upon this creature. Its greasy gray-black plumes, its golf ball sized head. Indeed, I wonder what this animal did to merit such an unhappy existence. Unaware of my silent judgments, the pigeon continues to thrust itself forward in a series of unceremonious gyrations that render its sloppy composure even more undignified. Like a magnet, its randomized pattern begins to migrate in my direction and a prickly curtain drapes across my nervous system. My calves twinge with the image of those grimy feathers brushing against my pores. 

It nears. My eyes dart frantically from its spindly legs to the rapidly decreasing distance between us. Ten meters, eleven, nine, five, seven, four, three—

I jump to my feet and stumble backwards. My foot catches on something. I trip and almost fall, righting myself through a maneuver by which I rotate 180 degrees and kick forwards. Heads look my way in alarm, baffled by this inexplicable flurry of movement. I feign an apology and do my best not to make eye contact with the inquisitive onlookers. 

Now appropriately distanced, I become aware of my bizarre disposition. My cheeks glow red. It happened again. Of course it happened again. 

My nemesis, however, remains placid. Unknowing of the fright it has just invoked, it merely ruffles its wings in reaction to this unorthodox outburst. Then the stupid blundering pattern resumes and the equilibrium of the environment is restored.