Get That Pigeon, Muttley! – Chapter 8, Act 2, Strip 65

And Mopey doesn’t even mention the most important drawback of this form of communication: that those goddamn pigeons crap uncontrollably just all over the place. >_> In my estimation, that alone would be reason enough to switch to something more contemporary and practical, like mobiles. (Which I don’t really like in general, but I have to acknowledge their lack of defecation.)

Perhaps I’m just bitter from my disappointment when I learned that homing pigeons aren’t really “homing”…like, infra-red or radar guided. They just kind of vaguely recall certain places and might, or might not, return there, while crapping uncontrollably just all over the place. Not nearly as cool as it could have been. >_>

Of course Mopey also doesn’t mention any possible advantages of pigeon-based communication. For example it’s time-honored nature. Or the fact that it’s kinda romantic…or, well, would be, in cases where you don’t use an arrow to shorten the transmission time. But at such a short distance, the gain in efficiency is just too tempting, I guess. >_> So, well, the time-honored nature could be fielded, but that’s about it. Not really an indefensible omission.

So, yeah – as effective as Great Modesty Wall of Onsen is in safeguarding our heroes from potentially troublesome cross-gender contact, it has been recognized that contact does actually have certain advantages when it comes to facilitate communication. But will that argument carry the day? Or will the time-honor argument win out, perhaps aided by side-effects like forcing Snuka to exercise his archery, or the fact that pigeon can be somewhat tasty when prepared right (which takes a considerable amount of effort, though)? We will know on Monday.

5 Replies to “Get That Pigeon, Muttley! – Chapter 8, Act 2, Strip 65”

  1. Other forms of possible traditional communication:
    Message tied to an arrow (very quick but safety hazard and subject to the wind).
    Ninja bearing message in a scroll scaling the wall (reliable but slower than the pigeon and may reignite the Sengoku period).
    Smoke signals (reliable given the extremely short distance but excessive water may make maintaining fire difficult).
    Spirit communication (able to pass physical boundaries but risks unwanted demon summonings and messages tend to become vague and cryptic).

    1. What would be so bad about reigniting the Sengoku period? Putting an end to constant warfare and hunger might have seemed like a good idea back then, but they couldn’t have known that their descendants would use their freedom from such threats to utterly stress out about entrance exams and the correct way to hand over a business card. Really, having nothing bigger to worry about than a naginata to the crotch sounds relaxing by comparison. XD

      As for traditional methods of communications…well, actually I didn’t even supply any proper reason why they would have to use them. Technically, they could probably set up a zoom meeting via their mobiles without problems – how would the wall stop them? Fortunately, there’s a large amount of willful suspension of disbelief to work with, when it comes to throwing up obstacles that shouldn’t exist. And I’m shameless enough to make full use of it XD

  2. P.S.: Oh, crap, I was so busy complaining about the means of communication, that I forgot to write the actual message.

    1. Mopey probably hoped that agreeing on an alternative way of communication first would save her the trouble of writing out the whole actual message by hand…and then distributing it between several doomed pigeons, since she tends to get quite verbose at times. XD

  3. Who shoots a perfectly good carrier pigeon which clearly and efficiently did its job? Don’t they know how long it takes to train one of those? Geez, what a pair of idiots.

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