The American Pigeon Museum Is Real

Here’s evidence:

The marigolds look nice.

Pigeons.

War heroes.

Autosomal mutants.

After looking at enough paintings of pigeons, you start thinking that, yeah, maybe you *should* have a pigeon painting hanging up somewhere in your house.

The museum plays it all pretty straight.

Things I learned:

1. Pigeon racing is a thing and requires specialized time-keeping equipment.
2. Pigeons basically won the Franco-Prussian war for France (well — except that Prussia won that war).
3. The pigeons that are good at their jobs get names (such as Paddy, Gustav, and the one that won the Purple Heart). The others just get numbers.
4. There are breeds of pigeon that are categorized as “fancy”. Many of them look kind of weird.
5. Pigeons aren’t very good at making nests.
6. If you’re kind of a marginal visual artist, you could probably get your work hung in a museum if you focus on a very narrow subject matter.

Admission’s free, allow 90 minutes if you want to see everything. It’s located in OKC’s museum district (near the Cowboy Museum, Softball Museum, zoo, etc.). It *does* end up feeling a little like a skit from Portlandia.

bkd