New York Times Reporter Held Hostage by Pigeons!

Andy Newman, pigeon hostage

It all started on a mild spring morning last year, when Andy Newman, a reporter for the New York Times, was taking his daily constitutional through Central Park. Skirting a viaduct and gamboling gaily through a gazebo, Mr. Newman was as lighthearted as a jelly donut. But his life, which up until then had been one of unexampled jubilation, was about to take a very dark turn.

As he skipped gaily along the sidewalk he nearly stepped on two miserable-looking pigeons, sprawled in his way. Naturally compassionate, Mr. Newman bent down to shoo the two loitering birds out of his path. But they refused to budge, and one of them, after emitting a loud belch, asked him for a cigarette. 

When he told them he didn't smoke the two birds eyed him narrowly, then collapsed in a heap of dirty feathers, moaning softly.

Fearing they were injured, Mr. Newman scooped up the two birds and swiftly returned home, where he ensconced them in a wooden crate lined with jewelers cotton and provided them with a drip fountain filled with Perrier and a silver ramekin overflowing with a selection of grains such as quinoa and teff. 

The two pigeons, of course, were grifters -- and once they realized how gullible Mr. Newman was, they began to take over his life. First they demanded an indoor birdbath and a supply of patchouli bath bombs. Then they kicked him out of his own bed so they could construct a filthy, lice-ridden nest in it. Soon they demanded a cut of his weekly paycheck for liquor, tobacco, and sex workers off the street. And imagine Mr. Newman's horror when he discovered that while he was at work each day, reporting the news, the two dirty birds were dealing drugs out of his flat! When he threatened to go to the police about their nefarious activities, they pulled Kalashnikovs on him and backed him into the linen closet. 

The neighbors heard the entire ruckus and immediately called police for a SWAT team. They broke down Mr. Newman's door and disarmed the two vicious pigeons, but when they released him from the linen closet he refused to press charges and told the officers to get out. 

Mr. Newman had become the victim of Stockholm Syndrome. 

As of today Mr. Newman still caters to the every whim of those feathered fiends. His social life has disappeared and his work at the Times is suffering -- he only shows up on Ash Wednesday and Dominion Day. Co-workers are seriously considering an intervention, but the last editor to venture into Mr. Newman's home was found hanging upside down from the bow of the Staten Island Ferry two days later. It may be too late to do anything at all. 

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