In this collection, a heavy package returns to sender and starts to smell. Something is happening to all the pigeons. And, a hot air balloon flies across the sky with no one in it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the story 'The Pigeons Around Here Aren't Real' about?
So I figured we would read probably two or three of them and just get a feel for the author. Because a lot of these...
titles of these stories are really cool i think we're going to start with a package marked return to cinder move into the pigeons around here aren't real and then end off with it all started with a hot air balloon i don't know i just i i think that the the titles are fun and also i love these little these little dives on uh authors that have like shorter bodies of work it's fun to kind of like get the just like quick glimpses of these stories i think uh
that Manon, I'm not seeing like a ton of published work, but it looks like a thing he does a lot of is he crafts like these little Halloween decorations, stuff like that. Like he does little sculptures of like jack-o-lanterns and go,
So if you go to his Twitter, which is the same name as his NoSleep, Manon Lysette, or Manon Lysette, however it's pronounced, he has a link to an Etsy page called Manon's Pumpkin Patch, and he crafts little, like, Christmas ornaments that are skulls and ghosts and stuff like that. It looks pretty cool.
He also has a children's book he made, apparently, Little Pumpkin and the Fairy Lights, which is about, like, a little jack-o'-lantern pumpkin patch and stuff, and it looks very cute. So this guy's, like... These little figurines are sick. He's like an artist, but not in just talking about dead people and gross stuff like us. In a more legitimate way.
Are we sure this is also a man? Have we... Are we, are we for sure?
This is, I was assigning, um, I was assigning, uh, a gender there when I have no idea what that, I think the word man in like subtly put into my brain, man. Uh, but I don't know that this person, whoever this is, It does little figurines.
You know what? You said man. I'm just going to say woman. I have no idea. I mean, it doesn't really matter to me. I don't give a fuck. But I like the titles of these stories. I'm very excited. Especially just the pigeon one. Birds freak me out. I just don't like birds. You know what I mean? I don't like the thousand mile stare that birds give. It's just... I don't know.
If you don't have eyelids, it's like, what's the point or whatever? Do birds have eyelids? It's a quick Google. I'm almost positive. That's going to be a, yeah, I think I don't know if all of them, I'm almost positive. Yes. Birds have eyelids. They have three eyelids. Okay. Well that makes it even worse. Yeah.
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Chapter 2: How did the author come up with the idea for the pigeon eggs?
Well that's upper eyelid, lower eyelid, and then nicotitating, nicotitating membrane, a translucent third eyelid that moves horizontally across the eye from inner to outer. Oh my God. I do love a nice parrot, though. Or a toucan.
Is this the part where you launch into a story about you watched a parrot get molested or something when you were a child? No, no, no. Actually, I can give you a quick story about a bird.
But first, I just want to tell you... Be sure to listen to this episode on Spotify. Feel free to support us on the audio platforms if you are driving or commuting to work or something. Consider listening and rating us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It really does help us out a lot.
Now, let me get you, before we move into a package marked return to sender, I had this aunt I lived with whenever I first moved to California. She lived in this retirement community in a town that I won't say. I mean, I just did not give specifics, but she did live in California.
california and she had a bird like a parrot in her house that would talk to her right and i always thought was weird as she clipped the wings so it couldn't fly away and i remember asking her i was like that's like that's the most fucking torturous thing i've ever heard in my life clipping a bird's wings and it's just like cool i gotta walk around that's what birds are known for you know what i mean
So then she's like, oh, it's not a big deal. It happens. People do it all the time, you know, whatever. And she basically made it insinuate that she's just like, you know, I'm letting my animal do what it wants. It wants to hang out inside. So I'm doing that. And I'm like, okay, so that's cool. It wants to hang out inside. So I'm going to cripple it. That's a fun way to look at it.
So to deviate from that, because this is where it gets a little spicy is we don't even talk about the bird at all. One night, I come home. Once again, I remind you, she's in a retirement community. I come home. She's watching American Ninja Warrior in the living room. And her dog is licking her feet, like, obsessively. Like, whatever. And I was like, what a...
what are you doing she's like i'm just watching american ninja warrior and i mean that little motherfucker is going at those piggies like crazy her feet are glistening like it's just been like licking at it forever and i kind of sit down because i mean it's it's a porn it's like obscene it's like watching a car wreck and i was like you uh you just letting them kind of go at your feet she's like yeah i just let my animals do whatever they want and it was a weird parallel
where it was the same thing with the parrot, right? I'm like, I'm letting him do, this is what he wants. I'm like, so I clipped his wings. So my ass was thinking, I'm like, did this crazy, crazy old fucking woman lather her feet up in some kind of like, I don't know, coconut oil, honey, or fucking peanut butter. And she's just like, you want to lick my feet. You like it. You know what I mean?
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Chapter 3: What strange occurrences happened after the pigeon eggs were introduced?
I want to hear what your defense of this would even be. Go ahead. What do we do? That's a good work.
You know what? Nothing, dude. Not a damn thing.
No, no.
You know what? I thought it was friendly banter where you could, sure, you could read the story on your own, but this is reading it with pals, fun voices, fun interaction and bits. It's basically getting together and going camping with your buddies, except less, probably less homosexual stuff going on. Right.
How bad can I be? I'm just building the economy. Why do I feel like you've done a little fucking... Why do I feel like you've done a little scratchy sniff with your buddies down by the river? We are not finishing whatever that sentence was you were about to say. You cut that out right now. I was making a joke about us being like greedy economists.
There's no reason for you to take it to that degree. That was uncalled for.
I don't know.
You also, you can never... Okay, I'm not getting down. I'm not going down to your level. I'm not stepping into the trench.
You always cross your legs whenever you bring up the word canoe. You always do. Okay, you know what?
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Chapter 4: What happened when the baby pigeons hatched?
Oh, wow. That's like all curled up, like wrapped up. So wait, saying that the neighbor is in, the person that was like, hey, I'm leaving, can you check my mail?
Yeah, the YouTube wannabe guy. Yeah, can you check the mail for me?
So this is either he was, so yeah, he was either, it almost feels deliberate of like he knew it was going to be returned back.
Yeah.
And I guess then why would you even send it? Or maybe I'm curious, well, I'm getting ahead of myself. Go ahead.
I called the cops, and naturally they took me in for interrogation. It's kind of hard not to suspect the man with a corpse in his garage, after all. Thankfully, they soon realized I wasn't involved. My DNA might have been all over the box, the smell might have left a mark throughout my house, but there was one piece of irrefutable evidence in my neighbor's own hands that proved my innocence.
A vlogging camera. They showed me the footage only once. I'm not sure if they were allowed to, or if they felt so bad for me they figured it couldn't hurt. Either way, I saw it. My neighbor was sitting in the box outside of a shipping facility, laughing as he told the world how he was going to mail himself across state lines. He brought pee bottles, food, a pillow, and a few flashlights.
His friend, a guy I'd seen at his place several times to help with his stunts, closed the lid and presumably dropped him off for shipment. Throughout the next couple of hours or days, I'm honestly not sure, my neighbor recorded a few short clips about his progress.
I think I'm in the truck now. I can feel it moving. Must be in a warehouse. Pretty warm here. Still got plenty of food.
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Chapter 5: How did the story conclude with the mutated animals?
That's all it would be. It'd be haunting, don't get me wrong, but at the same time, kind of funny.
Just a little funny. I have to compliment the writing here because it got me... like twice. Cause I remember the, at the very first time when it's like, because we, and you said from the beginning, like it's a human body, it's definitely a human body, but then it's like, Oh, it's a human body. Oh, that's a surprise. And then at the end of it, it's like he died because he dropped him.
And that crack mentioned earlier was his neck. It's like, Oh, like it, it kept having fun deliveries, even though you kind of knew where it was going.
It was pretty good. It's the fun. Uh, I was wondering how it was going to loop around to with, uh, It's like, oh, he's a content guy. He does a lot of stupid stuff. I've seen him do stupid things like choke on cinnamon.
And it was one of those things where you're probably like, oh, this is just describing like not an imbecile, but you're just like, it's this like kind of just kind of a strange person doing something for fame. Yeah. So you're wondering my mind immediately was like, oh, he killed somebody and mailed it to his house or. you know, whatever, which doesn't make a lot of sense.
But the idea of him doing a prank like this is yeah. It makes no sense.
He did like a J station. Like I'm ordering someone from the dark web video or whatever, like a body showed up. Yeah.
So this next one is the pigeons around here. Aren't real. This is kind of an older one, 10 years ago. And it won the best title of 2015, uh, 2015 into December, 2016, uh, award, which it is. It's a great title. Very sad. You know, we talk about the titles and you know, how titles themselves are.
pieces of art as well of like getting people hooked and your imagination also running like a title is just as important as the body is this the one that won uh this just says best title of 2015 so i'm guessing it won best okay title but i'm not sure i don't know about story i don't the reddit thing confuses me because sometimes i know it'll show an award but it's like oh no that's not the stories award that's an award the author got one time it's like
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of manipulating nature in the story?
I needed to know if they'd gotten wise to our ruse, though I highly doubted they had the mental capacity to do so. Still, the project would prove fruitless if the birds weren't fooled by our cheap imitations, so it was best to keep an eye out. Over the course of the following weeks, I started getting strange reports about small animals behaving weirdly.
Frankly, I didn't pay much attention to them at first. They sounded a little insane to tell the truth. One woman claimed she'd seen a pigeon climb a tree. She said he crawled up the bark like a squirrel. Another report stated that a chipmunk had been seen attacking and killing a neighborhood dog. Another witness called in about an injured cat, but when he investigated, all he found was a pelt.
By the time I read the fifth report, I was starting to get a little worried. What was even more troubling to me was that these reports were coming from all over the city. If it had been confined to a single neighborhood, I would have suspected an outbreak of rabies or a new disease of some sort.
But the reports were coming in from all around Toronto and its suburbs, which span an extremely large area. How could anything spread so quickly? It had to be something else. I was just about to do a bit of research on the subject when Clint came in wearing a scowl. Broke shitty fucking eggs. Broke again. Grumbled, throwing himself on a chair. I force a grin. Crack a smile, would ya? The puns.
He tossed his worksheet on the table. That was an egg-cellent pun. He replied, releasing a chuckle. You remember to bring the footage? He unzipped his coat and reached into his pocket for an SD card. Got you covered. Movie time. We uploaded the footage and took a look. Pigeons. Pigeons sitting on their nests. Pigeons preening. Pigeons flapping their wings at one another. A squirrel.
A squirrel getting chased away by birds. More pigeons. It must have been the dullest security tape in the world, the kind of footage that even David Attenborough's lovely voice wouldn't be able to save. We fast-forwarded through days of pigeons doing pigeon-y things. Never once did they show any violence towards our replica eggs.
Clinton had dozed off by the time something finally happened on screen. The only reason I was still conscious was due to the copious amount of coffee I'd ingested that morning. It was dead of night. In the video, at least. One of the birds flew off its egg and perched itself on the nest, peering inside. This is it, I thought, leaning closer to the screen.
I figured he'd attacked the egg, but I was wrong. I watched as the video soundlessly continued, and something cracked open the egg from the inside. My jaw gaped open. This wasn't possible. The eggs were plastic shells. The only explanation was that we'd missed one real egg somewhere in the bunch. Yeah, that had to be it. I was witnessing the birth of a baby pigeon, nothing weird.
Except, baby pigeons don't look like smoke. A puff of dark air came out of the egg. The pigeon, head inches from it, inhaled the gassy substance. It reared back and stood completely still for about a minute before falling over. I watched as it started thrashing violently, like it was having a seizure. Then, from its beak spewed some kind of chunky liquid that evaporated as soon as it hit the air.
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