Entry 2: Pigeon Factory

Kookie Banjo Jr. had the Cwazy Gene, which meant his IQ was too high for the first 30 years of his life – about 175 points – to make up for the sudden switch to something a lot lower. But the IQ plunge wasn’t the problem. It was the cwaziness. It wasn’t a crazy you could explain or prescribe with medication either. It was the kind that thought by squatting in an open window he could inherit a house from a human (“hoooman”) or hitchhiked on the back of eagles.

Louis heard of Kookie through the grapevine because of spectacles like these. Kookie was sensational in the bird community, but for all the wrong reasons. He was clearly unaware he was famous because one of his stated goals was to become famous.

After the gene kicked in, Kookie was kicked out from his tenured position at a prestigious philosophy school at a Victorian university. No one could confirm to Louis why Kookie got fired, at least not on-the-record. From the accounts he heard, Louis had painstakingly scratched off options on his pencilled list from 17 possibilities to two: either Kookie had artificially inflated the complexity of final exams by 500% to ensure all students failed, or he had changed his lecturing method from old-school monologues to hypnosis.

Louis was keen on finding out the real reason. While the motivations behind his investigation were vast and impossible to enumerate, the focus here was to identify the earliest symptoms of the Cwazy Gene. In his current timeline of events mapped out on the wall of his office, Louis had determined Kookie went cwazy in around 1927. That meant nearly a century of this kind of nonsense. It also meant a lot of stories that Kookie relayed at The Café – most of them boring to the point of torture, but a few true and interesting. Louis knew when he was hearing compulsive lies or the truth: Kookie only lied about the most mediocre things. If the story was outrageous or bizarre, then it was true. (And if he preferred not to answer a question or suffered from a memory blackout about an event, he evaded the topic with an intentional level of tactlessness.)

So it was the case for the pigeon factory. This would have been an awkward topic if Samson the pigeon had been there, but it was right before he joined the group by accident (see Entry 1). As they got near The Café one day in mid-winter, Louis and Kookie saw some pigeons creating a ruckus in a nearby tree. Louis had dismissed it as pigeons being pigeons, but it meant something more sinister to Kookie.

“Lousy pigeons!” he said. “They want more than .1c per many dollars? If so, how would I become a bird millionaire?”

“Pigeons?” Louis looked up from the notepad he was consulting. Kookie was not sure why he needed a notepad. He advised Louis that any biography must be completely unauthorised.

“Yes the pigeons. The lousy birds. When I was fired, I needed the money. So I decided to open a pigeon factory.”

 “Making pigeons?”

“No, no. The pigeons exist already in nature. They were hired by me to make pencils. I pay them .1c an hour, I charge $10 for the pencil. The pencils earned me a small fortune. I paid my university loans already.”

“Wow, you must be a millionaire. The first bird millionaire.”

“Yes, my profits are in the millions. My debts are in trillions.”

Louis was confused. This was another mysterious piece of Kookie’s personal history. Why was Kookie so badly in debt?

“I will explain to you,” Kookie said, anticipating the question. He grinned like someone would if they were not so badly, tragically, in debt. “It is an interesting story.” Before he could continue, a pigeon swooped at him and they both rushed into The Café.

Sitting at their usual spot, Louis faced a window looking out at the tree where the pigeons sat. Kookie was facing Louis, his back to the tree. For the entire two hours they were at The Café, Kookie didn’t realise the pigeons were staking him out with binoculars.

It turned out that the pigeon factory was operational for many decades before closing only a few years ago. Kookie explained he had further maximised profits by changing locations frequently and not paying the building lease anywhere. It was a wonder he could be cwazy but still know how to maximise profits.

Creditors had been chasing him but were caught up by the legal uncertainties around litigating against birds. Serves them right for doing business with a kookaburra, Louis thought. But he had no sympathy for Kookie either. He deserved to be litigated, and worse. What made the situation far more infuriating was that Kookie didn’t realise his plight. He wasn’t stressed by his excruciating debt. Just this moment, he was ordering a special treat – a decadent three-layer cake that cost at least $25. It was a wonder Louis didn’t punch him in the face. But then he had a revelation and asked Kookie if the reason for his long life was his inability to feel stress. Kookie thought this was a stupid question. “No, it is because I am a healthy bird. I walk 12,000 steps per day, 2,000 more than recommended.”

Louis knew then to stop asking specially crafted questions. Yes, it was stupid – but only because it was far more effective to sit back and let Kookie reveal himself.