This morning the roofs handed out welcome mats no bigger than a postage stamp, one for each pigeon who keeps hours on the cornice. They smell faintly of warm tile and last night's leftover sun.
We asked at the bakery downstairs. "They wipe their feet now," said a baker with flour on her wrists. "The gutter used to hear a little shuffle at dawn. Today it was a polite tap, then a nod to the chimney."
A note from the rooftop caretaker appeared on the stairwell: please leave the dry corner of your mat for rain. The pigeons have already agreed, and the chimney, which sees everything, has started nodding back.