If we begin at the corner of Broad and Snyder, the watergaw of dawn breaking through grays and glass, then we can talk about the aging man who snatched a pigeon out of the air and walked away as if it was nothing — as if he had finally found what he was looking for while walking down the aisle of a grocery store like Wegmans or down through the streets of the Italian Market up on 9th and that was that. 

But those who knew Terry Sturbridge also understood that his ability to pull birds out of the air was akin to someone pulling flowers out of his sleeve whenever he wanted. Like he was some sort of magician down on The Shore. Green parrots. Smirking pigeons. Seagulls of discerning taste. All of them were available to Terry, this jewel box scattering of his past life  slowly accelerating away from being a retirement hobby into an outright obsession, and idle afternoons with the gentle talons of a sweet-faced macaw walking out onto his hand were slowly transitioning into daylong attempts of self-justification as to why he was filling the city up with all his birds.

The angle that had brought him up to Broad and Snyder was an attempt to send a message, one that couldn’t be tracked. The pigeon was supposed to go from a rooftop on South Bouvier over to a friend of his from the old days over in Cobbs Creek in West Philly but only got as far as this intersection, and why this intersection? It wasn’t a recapitulation of the gauntlet pigeons had faced in the city in the past — cops firing blanks in the air; some not firing blanks and just opting to drive back to the station with cars covered with what looked like fallen Sashimono flags from feudal Japan in miniature, a trial run of sorts for the Mummers — but something had brought the pigeon to this street corner, pulling it away from its intended target, and Terry was curious as to what that was.