THE COOP CAPER

“THE COOP CAPER”



Everyone said it was impentrable,it stood in a vacant field like a concrete pill box on stilts with chicken wire stapled to the plywood on one end that made an open area where the birds flew out of. It was a fortress of wood and steel holding its prize of wings and feathers. How long it stood there I didn’t know I used to watch them fly in a circle around and around then come home to roust. Some of them were called homers they could be taken far away let go and they would come back home. Others were tumblers, they would actually tumble in the air heading down to the ground then fly back up to do it all over again.



Al and I had built a pigeon coop in my back yard and we were buying pigeons when we had a little bit of money. We would go to this place that always smelled of stale bird crap and dried corn. It was run down and dirty and was owned by a guy we called the pigeon man because he really looked like an old pigeon, all broken up and he had a limp and his head would move back and forth when he walked like a pigeon.  We had all we could do to not laugh in his face. We would give him the money; pick out a bird that he would get for us. He had no trouble getting the bird we picked they seemed to know what he wanted. He would put the pigeon in a small box and off we would go.



I don’t remember who came up with the idea Al or I but we hatched a plan to tap that impenetrable fortress and steal some birds. It was called “tapping a coupe” and we were going to do it! We went in the day time and checked it out we made it look like we were watching the birds fly but we were looking at how the door worked. It was a big rusty steel door with no hinges or a visible lock it just kind of hung on the plywood coop. We could see some small holes in the door on the right side where a door handle would be but not a key hole or a lock or anything. How did they lock that door, if our plan to tap the coop was going to work we had to figure out how the door worked. We picked a night and brought with us two white laundry bags the type with a string attached so we could tie the bags closed. We also had a piece of steel rod that we used to slide in one of the holes and try and see what was holding the door closed. We got lucky on our 3 third or fourth try and the rod slid through the hole in the door and through a bar or something we pulled and pulled and the bar slid back and the door opened and we were in!



All the birds were cooing loudly, it was dark we couldn’t see very well and we just grabbed birds and starting shoving them into our laundry bags with their wings flapping and them cooing loudly. When the bags were full we tied up the sack and left the coop. The birds were heavy and we had trouble carrying them so we decided to take a bus on the corner. The bus stopped and Al and I got on paid our fare and sat down opposite each other in the front of the bus. I looked up at Al, he looked back at me and we smiled, we had done what they said couldn’t be done we broke into the impenetrable coop. Almost at the same time the birds started cooing very loud, it seemed like all of them were cooing in unison making such a racket that every one on the bus was looking straight at us. Here we were, two kids with two bags stuffed with birds, each bag was jiggling, and squirming, flailing and flapping making sounds that every one on the bus could hear, sounds that birds make when they are stressed out and in danger. It was a short bus ride only two stops and we got off, carried the bags of birds to my house went through the basement door dropped the birds in the coop and said some words to each other and Al left and went home.



We went to school the next day and every thing was OK until I got home. My father came home and took me up stairs and sat me down on the bed. It seems Al’s father found out about what we had done and told my father.  Some one had seen us and followed Al home and told his mom the next day. All I can remember of that night was my father slapping me very hard in the face and me crying on the bed. My dad was a passive man that was the only time he ever hit me. Now it wasn’t funny any more, now we were in trouble, we stole those pigeons and people knew about it.



When we opened the coop up the next day to remove the stolen birds all the birds took off like they always did we couldn’t stop them. When they returned to the coop we could see that all the birds we stole were gone along with some of our birds. What we didn’t know was that all the birds we took were trained homing pigeons and they just flew back to where they lived all we did was for ought. Some time later the coop was gone and the vacant lot became a super market and we got rid of all the pigeons.