By Andrew D. Blechman
The fascinating saga of the world's most revered and reviled bird
These segments included on the SAHPA website with the permission of the author.
Book purchased from a bookshop in Rundle Mall, Adelaide.

Chapter 1 "OLD COCKS"
Page 19 and 20

IT'S ANOTHER BRUTALLY COLD AND WINDY DAY, THE SKY A lifeless dull gray. Jose's brother, Orlando Martinez, parks his truck outside a small run-down cinder-block building beneath the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and warms his hands on the dashboard vents. A sign reads BOROUGH PARK HOMING PIGEON CLUB, EST. 1924.

It's the first club meeting of the new race season. Orlando had suggested I attend this meeting, but now he's starting to regret bringing me along. He takes a deep breath and removes his keys from the ignition. "I have to warn you. All we do at these meetings is fight. We should have come wearing hard hats and bulletproof vests."

Inside there are a few battered benches, discarded school chairs, and a Coke machine that sells Budweiser. A collection of gold trophies capped with regal-looking pigeon figurines sits on a shelf just beneath the water-stained drop ceiling. A few dozen men, ranging from their early twenties to their late seventies, mill around an old feather-encrusted kerosene heater. One man chews on an extinguished cigarette butt, flipping it around with his tongue. It's a rough-looking bunch, and they eye me suspiciously.

Orlando, with his natural buoyancy, easy charm, and boyish smile, stands out from the crowd. His boisterous enthusiasm and loud wisecracks are generally out of step with the club's pervasively dour mood. Despite being in his mid-forties, Orlando shows few signs of traditional maturing. His olive skin is smooth and nearly unwrinkled; he regularly dresses in sneakers and jeans, works erratically, and lives with his mother as well as his chatty young wife, Omayra, more than twenty years his junior.

He struts around the room as if running for political office, playfully slapping backs, throwing fake punches, and showing off his custom-embroidered jacket depicting a gray pigeon with red feet and the words "OJ Loft" (for Orlando and Jose's racing team, or "loft"). He gets into a discussion about pigeon feed with his friend Sal. "Don't get me wrong, it's clean feed," Orlando says. "But I still think it's garbage."

John Ferraro, the club's large and occasionally ill-tempered president, sits behind a picnic table and calls the meeting to order. He's in a particularly foul mood today, perhaps owing to the facsimile of him that Orlando is passing around: "John Ferraro, wanted for molestation of pigeons. Last seen with a red-checker hen between his legs."

The first order of business is termites. The club's basement is full of them. After some rancorous debate, the members agree to hire an exterminator. Next item is the scheduling and cost of shipping birds. Shipping dates can be a tempestuous topic, because they form the framework upon which the entire racing season is built. The birds are typically dropped off at the club on a Friday night; trucked overnight to a destination, say, three hundred miles away; then released in the morning.

Chapter 11 "THE OLD BIRD'S BIRDS"
Page 203 and 204
. . . ."We produce a lot of pigeons. Some are very good; many more are bad. We can only guarantee the health of the bird and its origin. It's like buying a lottery ticket. If the ticket is cheap enough, it's worth the risk."

In its own way, pigeon racing is a meritocracy. You can spend a lot of money on an expensive pigeon, but that alone won't ensure success. There is no guarantee whatsoever that a champion bird will pass on its vitality to its progeny. And even if it does, it will be wasted unless properly nurtured in the hands of a hardworking and knowledgeable fancier. Money is no substitute for dedication, which is why many of the world's top racers are elderly pensioners with decades of experience.

As Joseph concedes, Belgium is no longer a mecca for pigeon racing. But it does remain the sport's spiritual and commercial center. In effect, the country is cashing in on its faded glory. Wherever you go in the world, you'll find pigeon fanciers breeding Belgian birds and using Belgian products.

Nowhere is this more the case than in Asia, where a trip to Belgium is considered a mandatory pilgrimage. While Natural has its share of awed tourists, the ne plus ultra is a visit to the beating heart of competitive pigeon racing-a modest town house in the otherwise unremarkable Belgian village of Arendonck.

There resides Louie Janssen, an impish old man who sits on a genetic gold mine-the bloodline of his eponymous birds. Established and bred by his father in the 1930s and nurtured by Louie and his now deceased brothers, the pedigreed lineage of the Janssen birds is synonymous with speed and vitality. These birds are considered avian royalty, and their descendants can be found in tens of thousands of lofts across the globe. Framed portraits of Louie have been known to adorn the walls of many clubhouses in China, in the honorary space traditionally left for Communist leaders.

Although the Janssen siblings were made wealthy by their birds, they never married and never left the confines of their parents' home. Like many Belgians, they've always kept their birds in an attic loft and a small shed in their postage-stamp-sized backyard. Nobody's quite sure of the extent of the Janssen fortune-they've always demanded cash, which they've seemingly never spent. It is said that Louie has never traveled ten miles beyond his village. As he has no children, it's uncertain what he will do with the family fortune. It's rumored that he will donate it to his local church-that is, if the state doesn't confiscate it as com-pensation for decades of presumed tax evasion.

Residents of Arendonck are accustomed to bewildered pilgrims asking for directions in foreign tongues to the Janssen home. Louie greets them genially at his door-step and agrees to pose for photographs. But it doesn't take long for the conversation to turn to business. Inevitably, the foreign fanciers want to know one thing: Are any of Louie's miraculous pigeons for sale?

Louie responds in a mischievous fashion that all too many pilgrims mistake for sincerity: "Gosh, I'm sorry, but no." The desperate visitors beg, plead, cajole: "Just one bird, any bird ... please!" Thousands of dollars later, Louie descends from his attic loft, bird in hand, and "reluctantly" hands it to the grateful visitor, who is certain he just engineered an avian coup.

It's worth noting that Louie hasn't raced his birds for decades. Like Joseph De Scheemaecker at Natural and . . . . .

Chapter 13 "THE MAIN EVENT"
Page 223-225
ORLANDO'S OBSESSIVE TRAINING SCHEDULE PAYS OFF HANDsomely come fall as his birds dominate the young-bird club races. By the time it's shipping night for the Main Event in mid-October, Orlando's birds have placed first in six races. In one race, they even won a trifecta-first, second, and third place.

Shipping night for the Main Event is a once-a-year celebration. The Bronx Homing Pigeon Club is swamped with people, food, and chatter. A giant foil-wrapped buf-fet is representative of the night's diversity: rice and beans, stuffed peppers and manicotti, fried chicken and greens, kielbasa and sauerkraut.

Outside in the clubhouse garage, racers from Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, New Jersey, Long Island, and Connecticut drop off their birds to be shipped all the way to Triadelphia, West Virginia, over 350 miles away. The club's vice president inspects each bird's wings to make sure they have molted properly. Molting uses up a tremendous amount of a bird's energy, so some racers try to retard the molting process by keeping their birds in the dark for at least sixteen hours a day. That way the birds can put all their energy into racing. But it's cheating, so a bird's wings are checked for proper molting before it's allowed to race.

Another man inspects all the race clocks, synchronizes them, and then seals them. In the center of the room, people place additional bets on the race through an auctioning process. For example, if someone thinks Orlando's birds will do especially well, he or she can "buy" the loft. If one of Orlando's birds wins, the bettor will also win a substantial sum.

Back inside, the organizers of the race, Joey Musto and Larry Doherty, collect funds and officially enter con¬testants into the race. Musto, a boiler mechanic who serves as race secretary, speaks with a voice so gravelly it could pave a driveway. Doherty, a sprightly Irish gentleman of seventy-three, wears an old-fashioned newsboy cap and has buttoned his shirt all the way to the top.

Doherty is busy discussing the litter he uses-"crushed corncob mixed with feathers and droppings, raked daily, to provide a natural warmth in the coop"-when nineteen-year-old Jason Howel of Staten Island walks up to pay his entry fee. Howel is easily two decades younger than the other racers milling about.

"There aren't too many young guys going into it," says Howel, who races with his uncle. "None of my friends want anything to do with it. But I like it. I spend twelve hours a day with the birds. It keeps me out of trouble." The amount of time racing requires also keeps Howel from going to college. "Everything's for the birds. It's got to be like that if you want to win," he says. "It's not a sport that attracts a lot of young people these days," Doherty says. "I started flying pigeons when I was ten. I learned from my father, who flew pigeons in the old country. But I have eight children and seventeen grandchildren, and not one of them is interested in it. More kids graduate college nowadays than win races." The club's membership roster has dwindled from eighty, when Doherty joined in 1956, to its current thirty-five.

"It's endless work, three hundred sixty-five days a year," pipes up Donna Musto, Joe's wife, from across the table. "To be honest, I don't get it. He's always with the birds, and when he's not, they're always on his mind. We plan our vacations around them, our nights out around them. He's like, `We can't go out tonight-it's pigeon night.' Hell, we plan everything around them. It's like they're his babies. And it only gets worse during training. It's always pigeons, pigeons, pigeons. It's all I hear. Fifteen years later, I can't even look at them anymore. Meanwhile, he's up on the roof, in that raining weather, waiting for those damn birds to come home."

Musto throws Donna a look reminiscent of Jackie Gleason in The Honeymooners and then asks her to "go get the picture." Donna doesn't budge. Musto grudgingly gets up and returns with a Polaroid. He slides it across the table.

The photo is of a pigeon standing on a pedestal, looking blankly into the camera. "Out of two thousand and forty-eight birds, she comes in first!" Musto says excitedly. "First! It's something I never done before." Musto folds his arms across his barrel chest and beams.
"See, he had to tell you," Donna says. "He had to show you the picture."

Doherty chimes in. "I'm married fifty years, and I told my wife that as long as we have the blue check hen upstairs, we're okay." Most everyone in the room laughs. Doherty's best breeder is a blue check hen.