prokopetz:

rabidpeep:

kittenclysm:

prokopetz:

Using homing pigeons and other birds to deliver messages doesn’t work quite like the movies show you.

You can’t just give a bird a message and tell it where to go. Each bird has a specific location that it will return to (hence “homing”), and if you want to send a message somewhere via bird, you first need to have a caged bird from that location delivered to you. Thus, it’s not very good for two-way communication, unless each destination gets regular bird deliveries from the other; you’ll more typically hold the birds in reserve for urgent one-way messages.

This creates a few amusing scenarios that you won’t see in films:

1. You need to send an urgent message somewhere, but you don’t have a bird from there to give it to. You’re all going through your bird room looking for the right bird, and it’s not there – somebody’s already used it, and you’re like “okay, who used the last bird to Farplacia?”.

2. So instead you send it to the next-nearest place you have a bird for, with instructions to forward it on, but it turns out that they don’t have any birds to Farplacia left, either, and the message ends up bouncing around everywhere as everyone tries to get it where it’s supposed to go.

3. Also, being the guy who transports the birds. Think about it.

FUCK I SPILLED THE BIRDS. WHICH IS WHICH.

Pretty sure if you spill the birds, the problem of which is which would solve itself as they all fly back to where they came from.

Now the poor asshole has to travel the state to recollect the birds he spilled.

Unless the spillage happened indoors, and the asshole in question just stuffed them all back into their cages and didn’t tell anyone. Now you’ve got messages being misdirected at random – fun for all!

(There are probably any number of fanfic AUs lurking in there…)