Exclusive | Meet the wacky pigeon girls adopting oft-hated rats with wings who swear they make lovable pets: Theyre amazing creatures

When Bimini Wright, a 38-year-old Brooklyn writer and performer, embarked on a routine subway ride back in September 2025, she did not expect to return home with a pigeon.Wright first found the then-squab, which she has since named Smidgen, “stumbling around” a subway platform off the Q line during a Monday morning rush hour.“I was about to step onto the train, and this little ball of feathers basically ran into my foot,” Wright told The Post.“I was, like, ‘Wait, where do you think you’re going?’” she recalled.”It was about to topple onto the subway tracks … It had absolutely zero survival skills.”Initially naming the squab “Birdie Sanders,” Wright decided to take the bird back to her apartment and arranged a cardboard box for it to stay during her workday.

After calling the rescue and education organization NYC Wild Bird Fund — which advised putting the pigeon back where she’d found it — Wright attempted to return it to the same subway platform, placing it on a covered electrical box to keep it safe from harm’s way.But when she returned the next day to check the bird’s status — and found it scrunched behind the box, “peeping and flapping” — Wright knew she’d found her new feathered companion.“I’d missed having an animal for a long time, but I’d never pulled the trigger on getting one because it seemed irresponsible,” said Wright, citing her “very cool” roommate as a large factor in keeping the squawking squab.“But when a baby bird literally runs into your hands like you’re a gritty Disney princess, you kind of (feel) it was meant to be.”And, apparently, the public is fascinated with stories like hers.Wright joked to The Post that after all the burlesque videos she’s posted over the years, she’s best known for the content featuring Smidgen.

In fact, her most popular pigeon TikTok rings in at 2.4 million views and features Smidgen’s “graduation” from “seed school,” a socialization techn...