Just call me “Queen of Giant Eagle’s parking lot mutated pigeons.”

No, really.

I took my little brother into Columbus the other day to do some Christmas shopping-- quite a successful outing by the way. Around lunch time we swung though the McDonalds drive though for a quick drink that ended up to be a lunch, and also ended up being not so quick. So we stopped in the middle of Giant Eagle’s parking lot to finish our lunch before heading back into the crazed Christmas shopping crowd and as soon as I put the car in park about five big birds started waddling over to us. Now this is quite strange for me… the birds I’m used to are little brown, nervous things that peck and fly away as soon as you make eye contact with them. These Giant Eagle birds looked kinda like pigeons, but were about three times that size, white, and had either flat blue wings, or brown spotted ones.

My brother and I passed the time munching on French fries, talking about what stores to stop at next, and how strange these few birds were. Anytime a car drove by a stray bird would waddle slowly and carelessly away, and my brother and I would shout at the car, and pray for the life of our bird. It didn’t take long before we just had to feed them.

I rolled my window down, really I pushed a button and it rolled down, and threw a French fry out the window. Good lord the birds went crazy! Some were flying in the air to get above the ones searching the asphalt to get at the fried food, others just cried because they couldn’t get close, and still others nipped at their neighbors. This turned out to be wonderful entertainment for my brother and I. We would roll down our windows and throw out French fries and quickly roll the window back up again because the birds seemed quite willing to come inside for more food.

This entertainment quickly turned into a competition when I referred to one bird as my favorite, a plump thing with no neck, blue wings, and seemingly only one leg, I called him Gimpy. He was loyal to me, and would only eat French fries thrown from my window, not my brothers.

Well, my brother wouldn’t stand for that. He soon named one of his birds Lucky because it was almost run over by a car while we were sitting there. Then he started throwing more French fries to his birds. After just a few throws more birds had flown over from other parts of the parking lot to his side, he had about thirty “subjects” in his kingdom. His mutated pigeons loved him more, even a few of my birds waddled over to his side… you could say they abandoned me, but I say I cast them out.

This went on and on, French fires thrown from windows, or the sun roof, and birds crazily chasing after them. At one point I threw a handful of fries, but with my stellar aim they hit the part of the window and fell in my lap. The birds started going crazy and flying up, so I quickly tried to roll my window up, but instead hit the button for it to go down-- yeah my brother and I freaked and just started pushing crazed birds out of the car as fast as we could. Every once in awhile we counted the birds on our side of the car to see who was winning. He had thirty some, I had less than twenty.

But I had a strategy to winning in the long run. My brother’s a big guy, a wrestler, football player, track runner, all around I-can-kick-your-ass kinda guy, he also eats lots of fries. When he was out I threw the rest of my French fries out the window and attracted a crowd of birds that could probably be seen from orbit.

They loved me, the mutated pigeons really loved me!

Wow, it’s times like this when I really feel like I should just grow up a bit.

On more important news, I touched the official Firefly DVD’s today! I can’t buy them because I’m sure that I’m getting them for Christmas, but I walked past Samgoody today and there they were, right up front. I had to go inside and just hold them for a minute.

And I knew it.