Let me start off by saying that I’m quite ignorant on carrier pigeons. I can state with absolute certainty that I shouldn’t be commenting on the subject. With that said, I just don’t see what good a carrier pigeon can be. And I’m not talking just because we now have magical tubes that transport our thoughts to other people’s computers. I mean that a carrier pigeon seems like a really limited way to deliver messages. The pigeon has to know where it’s going, and it’s not like you can ask it to make a second stop. “On your way to deliver my bid to build Duke Ellsinghibbington’s moat, swing by Lord Chesterworths’ castle and drop of this Get Well Soon card.” Seriously, you trust a pigeon to remember which aristocrat gets what package?
Say I wanted to feel olde-timey and send a friend a message via carrier pigeon. That pigeon has no reference as to where my friend lives. To get that message, my friend would have to go to the only other place that carrier pigeon knows how to get to, and who knows where that might be. I’d be better off sending the message along with a peasant on the back of a burrow.
It just doesn’t seem worth it. And it doesn’t seem like it could have been worth it back when people actually did use carrier pigeons. “Uh, great, you can get a pigeon to fly from here to my cousin’s and back. But shouldn’t you be mid-wifing for all the pregnant women?”
Forget it. It’s not worth the effort. I’ll stick to smoke signals.
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