A bird’s-eye view; bring back carrier pigeons

Published 1:30 am Friday, May 22, 2026

It’s time we went back to using carrier pigeons.

Hear me out. Modern e-mail and text messages are too fast. We send things without thinking about them and regret it later, if we remember what we said at all.

I’m typing this column on my phone, and I can’t even remember the last sentence I wrote. Good thing it wasn’t important.

Besides, text messages have a nasty habit of making you write in emojis and abbreviations.

Carrier pigeons are cool. They find their way home using magnetoreception.

Magnetoreception is a fancy word composed of the term “Magneto,” meaning the villain from the X-Men series, and “reception,” meaning a formal social occasion.

I’ve never heard of pigeons receiving Magneto under any circumstances, but I admit I haven’t read many of the X-Men comics.

I prefer to think that magnetoreception is the phenomenon of having a miniature magnet implanted in one’s brain.

As a pigeon flies, the magnetic forces of the Earth pull it to its destination.

I assume the same principle applies to airplanes. Don’t try to convince me that something heavier than air can “fly” across an ocean.

No, what happens is an air traffic controller in New York City (via carrier pigeon) sends a message to a controlleur d’air traffique in Paris to turn on a mega-magnet.

The Paris controlleur switches on their mega-magnet, and behold! The New York City airplane is pulled across the ocean at light speed.

Of course, this probably pulls many airplanes toward Paris, but everyone should visit the city at least once in their life, so it’s not a big loss.

All this mega-magnet business might explain why planes are delayed so often.

Humans, unfortunately, don’t have magnets in their heads.

This explains my horrible sense of direction. I can’t read magnetic fields.

Or paper maps, for that matter.

But humans have a saving grace. They are inventive. Not only can they make up comics about pigeons and Magneto, but they can also build GPS devices.

GPS stands for “Get People Stuck.” Such devices work by sending complex calculations through 30 satellites orbiting in space to pick a random point on the Earth’s surface.

Then they tell you how to get there, if you are a carrier pigeon.

Humans can’t fly (and we can’t magnetically pull ourselves places), so we’re forced to rely on emailing and texting people.

We pass road signs, snap pictures, and shoot them off to Instagram or Snapchat with a caption like “Where I am!”

Everyone smiles and plasters these posts with emojis.

The posts are really meant to read “Where am I,” but as I’ve mentioned, we type too fast. By the time the mistake is noticed, you’re already across a state border.

Thus, we spend vacations glued to our phones instead of taking in the scenery, as a pigeon would.

This is why we need to slow things down. We need to appreciate life with all its beauties and glories.

And I’ll do just that as soon as I figure out where the heck I am.

Copyright 2026 Alexandra Paskhaver, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Alexandra Paskhaver is a software engineer and writer. Both jobs require knowing where to stick semicolons, but she’s never quite; figured; it; out. For more information, check out her website at https://apaskhaver.github.io.