Urban pigeons and rats are definitely NOT a safe food. They’re full of chemical pollution that you can’t cook out, and probably more than a few diseases which you might also catch. It beats starving to death, but you should consider basically anything else, including boiling your (vegetable tanned) leather belts and shoes.
Pigeons are actually a domesticated animal that used to be bred for (among other things) food. So you re-domesticate a few of them, and then eat their offspring which you feed household scraps.
You might also save on heating in the winter by having larger cattle in your house and sleeping on a loft above them.
Oh yeah, you can totally eat pigeons, and people do. You can totally eat rats (and I assume some people do). But those aren’t the ones you randomly spot eating garbage in the cities.
Urban pigeons and rats are definitely NOT a safe food. They’re full of chemical pollution that you can’t cook out, and probably more than a few diseases which you might also catch. It beats starving to death, but you should consider basically anything else, including boiling your (vegetable tanned) leather belts and shoes.
Pigeons are actually a domesticated animal that used to be bred for (among other things) food. So you re-domesticate a few of them, and then eat their offspring which you feed household scraps.
You might also save on heating in the winter by having larger cattle in your house and sleeping on a loft above them.
Oh yeah, you can totally eat pigeons, and people do. You can totally eat rats (and I assume some people do). But those aren’t the ones you randomly spot eating garbage in the cities.
I remember a tour guide in Paris showing me a poster from the Siege of Paris by the Prussians.
Dog meat, pigeons, rats, etc.
Honestly I’d just do what Napoleon III did and just sit in the field and wait to get hit at that point.
I imagine a late 19th century rat or pigeon had a much healthier diet than a modern one. Just be sure not to touch the lungs too much…