Another slow news day, another bird-themed Japanese Twitter picture making the rounds.
To put it lightly, Japan’s major cities have a bit of a pigeon problem. According to Japan’s National Institute for Environmental Studies, the pigeon (or, holy crap, technically the “feral rock dove”), is an invasive species to the Japanese mainland that now inhabits essentially every speck of land, including, even, some distant islands belonging to Japan.
As with invasive pigeons in other cities throughout the world, Japanese pigeons have largely adapted to an urban environment, losing their instinctive fear of humans, nesting in and among buildings and, apparently, even frequenting McDonald’s.
A visitor to a Hachioji-area McDonald’s on the outskirts of Tokyo proper snapped this photo recently of a trio of pigeons just hanging out at one of the restaurant’s tables, presumably having a chat about how much they love pooping on things and enjoying some fry crumbs and a Coke.
Japanese media and Twitter aggregates picked it up and the photo now has the Japanese Internet buzzing.
While most Netizens seem to be having a quiet chuckle about it, at least some are reacting with genuine concern. Pigeons are, after all, notorious harbingers of disease, including something called cryptococcosis, which doesn’t sound pleasant at all, and one does have to wonder why there don’t appear to be any employees attempting to escort the animals to the nearest bronze statue or something.
Then again, there’s a chance they were legitimately paying customers, in which case demanding that they leave purely because of their feathery exteriors would be asking for a discrimination lawsuit from the pigeons’ lawyer.
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