Frustrated and angry, the pigeons began setting fires in adjacent neighborhoods, at places upwind from the cathedral on gusty nights, in hopes the flames would spread. Early on the morning of September 2, 1666, their efforts were disastrously successful. A pigeon named Nesmith set fire to a bakery a half mile from Saint Paul’s. As the bakery was consumed, a ferocious wind pushed the flames straight uphill toward the cathedral. It burned completely—naves, belfries, and all—and after four days of destruction, so had eighty-seven other churches and more than ten thousand homes. The city was a smoking ruin.16
The pigeons hadn’t envisioned such devastation, and they felt genuinely bad about it. Emotionally, it was a different thing altogether from the Viking raids. Though the damage was comparable, this was their fault entirely. They called a meeting and debated whether to leave London altogether. Perhaps, some argued, they did not deserve to live there anymore. The vote was split, and they decided to return the following day and debate the matter again. That night the revenge attacks began. There was a contingent of humans who seemed to understand that pigeons were to blame for the fire, and had decided to drive them out. They soaked bread crumbs in arsenic and tried to poison the pigeons. They cut down the pigeons’ favorite roosting trees and destroyed their nests. They chased pigeons with brooms and bats and shot at them with muskets. After that, not a single pigeon was willing to leave the city; they were too proud. Instead they voted to fight back again.
The pigeons pecked and pooped and spread disease and did everything they could to make the humans miserable. In turn, the humans ratcheted up their violence against the birds. Truthfully, the pigeons couldn’t do much more than annoy the humans, but when the humans started to rebuild the cathedral—the very symbol of their arrogance—the pigeons waged all-out war. Thousands of them descended on the construction site, risking life and wing to chase away the workers. Day after day, pitched battles were waged between the humans and the birds, and no matter how many pigeons the humans killed, more always seemed to come. They reached a stalemate. Construction ground to a halt; it seemed there would never be another cathedral on the site of Saint Paul’s, and that the pigeons of London would be harassed and killed forever.
A year passed. The pigeons continued to fight, and their numbers to dwindle, and though the humans were steadily rebuilding the rest of London, they seemed to have abandoned their plans for the cathedral. Yet the violence continued, because hatred between humans and pigeons had become ingrained.
One day, the pigeons were meeting on their island when a rowboat arrived carrying a single human. The pigeons became alarmed and were about to swarm him when he raised his arms and shouted, “I come in peace!” They soon learned that he wasn’t like most other humans—haltingly, brokenly, he could speak the pigeons’ native language of chirps and coos. He knew a great deal about birds, he told them, and peculiar birds at that, because his mother had been one. Moreover, he sympathized with their cause and wanted to broker a peace.
The pigeons were astounded. They took a vote and decided not to peck the man’s eyes out—at least not right away. They questioned him. The man’s name was Wren, and he was an architect. His fellow humans had tasked him with attempting to rebuild the cathedral on the hill yet again.
“You’re wasting your time,” said Nesmith, the fire starter and the pigeons’ leader. “Too many of us have died to prevent it.”
“Of course, nothing can be built without peace,” replied Wren, “and no peace can be achieved without understanding. I come seeking a new understanding between my kind and yours. First: we recognize that the air is your domain, and we will build nothing in it without your permission.”
“And why would we give our permission?”
“Because this new building would be different from all the ones that came before. It would not be meant solely for the use of humans. It would be yours, too.”
Nesmith laughed. “And what would we want with a building?”
“Why, Nesmith,” said another pigeon, “if we had a building we could escape from the cold and the rain when the weather was bad. We could roost and lay eggs and stay warm.”
“Not with humans around to bother us!” replied Nesmith. “We need a space all our own.”
“What if I could promise you that?” said Wren. “I’ll make the cathedral so tall that humans won’t have any interest in using the top half at all.”
Wren did more than make promises. He returned day after day to discuss his plans, and even altered them to satisfy the pigeons’ whims. They demanded all sorts of nooks and crannies and belfries and arches that were all but useless to humans, but were cozier than a living room to pigeons, and Wren agreed. He even promised the pigeons their own entrance, high above the ground and inaccessible to the non-winged. In exchange, the pigeons promised not to stand in the way of construction, and once it was built, not to make too much noise during services or poop on the worshippers.
And so an historic accord was forged. The pigeons and humans called off their war and returned to merely annoying one another. Wren built his cathedral—their cathedral—a proud and towering place, and the pigeons never again tried to destroy it. In fact, they felt such pride in Saint Paul’s that they swore to protect it—and to this day they still do. When fires break out they swarm and beat the flames with their wings. They chase away vandals and thieves. During the great war, squadrons of pigeons redirected bombs in midair so that they fell clear of the building. It’s safe to say that Saint Paul’s would not be standing today without its winged caretakers.