Pidgeon spotting

I think I wrote also in English that I drove for an EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy session to cure my pidgeon phobia to a nearby city on Friday. Since then I have been chasing pidgeons (!), not with a gun but with my camera or as today, without it. When I formerly crossed the street to avoid pidgeons, I did it today in order to experience how it feels to be close to them, Alas, they did not care about me but rather went further from away from me. I could of course have run after them but did not have time. A colleague of mine poignantly said that the therapy dose was too large! Well, let's see. I still do not like to look at the pictures I took of the 30-40 pigeons in a "heap" yesterday. I was about 1.5 meter from them!!! ME who could not even look at pictures of pidgeons, let alone at living ones. My intention is to start with the pictures where I was further away and the pidgeons look small and one can see my shadow and then desensitize myself in order to CALMLY look at the close ups I took , partly using my telephoto lens, which, by the way, is good also in high places. One does not feel the height in the same way. I have not really a fear of heights, but tend to be a bit wary, as when climbing metal stairs on the water tower in Jena last summer. One could see down through them but I badly wanted pictures so I climbed them, albeit partly creeping.

I rather tend to be brave, as when I jumped with a parachute. The situation was such that I belonged to a group of people on a army defense course, on our way in a bus to a military airfield. I should have understood from the name of the place what it was all about. A major asked for volunteers and I am terribly quick so I lifted my hand and said "me" without knowing what I volunteered for. Well, it turned out that we had to jump with a parachute, not from a plane, but from a tower. We were pushed out into the air! Afterwards I jokingly told the group that happily I wore new, black underwear with laces because we were going to have a festive dinner the same evening. I would have made a nice corps... Later I heard that the jump was a test of manlyhood for the recruits!!!!!!!!!!!! So maybe my bravery made me approach the pigeons yesterday. Perhaps I thought that I AM cured (I may well be, who knows) and this made me appraoch them. The two pidgeons today did not make ANY impression on me. Next, I'll sit on a park bench and wait for some pidgeons to approach me, then go to some outdoors restaurant (perhaps in France, where I'll be in two weeks time). If I pass THAT test, then I know that I really am cured.