THE STORY
My spirit animal used to be a polar bear.
I know.
Very dramatic.
But polar bears are cool. They live on ice, they hunt seals, they look incredible in a documentary and nobody questions their place in the food chain.
I thought that was me.
Then I thought about it for a second.
I get cold getting out of the surf. I don’t hunt. I don’t like confrontation. I definitely couldn’t kill a seal, unless it had personally wronged me somehow.
And I have never once looked incredible in a documentary.
So, the polar bear had to go.
I started noticing pigeons more.
They’re everywhere. Train stations, pub gardens, outside bakeries, sitting in the middle of the road like they have nowhere else to be. Most people hate them. They call them rats with wings, which is harsh considering rats have much better PR.
But pigeons are tough.
They can find their way home from ridiculous distances. They carried messages through wars. They survive cities, bad weather, small children chasing them and people trying to kick them out of cafés.
They eat absolutely anything.
That one felt personal.
I realised a pigeon is probably much closer to my actual spirit animal. Not in a glamorous way. More in the sense that I’ve made a few wrong turns, spent more than enough time hanging around cafés and somehow always found my way home.
Usually a little dishevelled.
Sometimes missing money.
But home.
So I made this hat for the pigeon.
It’s black because pigeons never get enough credit for their darker side. The feather looks like it has been through something, because it probably has. The black grosgrain is torn and repaired because nothing interesting stays perfect for long.
And then there’s the cross.
I’m not particularly religious, but I put it there because I think the pigeon deserves to be a saint.
Not a proper saint. More like the patron saint of missed trains, bad decisions, public benches, cheap chips and people who don’t look like they have it together but keep going anyway.
The patron saint of finding your way home.
The polar bear can keep the Arctic.
I’ll take the pigeon.
KM