Stencils - the "Permanent Pigeon"

Venice is known for her pigeons; most of them come and go as they please. They fly, they walk, they crap on things, they do that weird head-bobbing thing that many birds do.

In fact most of them never stop moving.

So when I was walking through Dorsoduro one day and noticed a pigeon just standing there, it occurred to me that something was no right.
I took a closer look.
It had the shape of a pigeon, and out of the corner of my eye, I'd thought it was a pigeon, but it was a stencil.

With some graffiti and stencilwork, there's a purpose: marking territory, making a statement, swaying public opinion or perhaps just pissing people off.

In this case I'm not sure what the motivation was.

Perhaps the artist did it so they could sit close by on a bench and laugh at people like me - standing there and wondering.

Maybe the artist felt that Venice needed another pigeon.

Or maybe the person who sprayed this "Permanent Pigeon" on the wall wasn't an artist at all. Maybe he or she is a hunter, using a two-dimensional decoy to attract other pigeons.

With the recent law against feeding pigeons, perhaps someone was worried that all those precious pigeons would fly away, so they painted one that would stay there permanently.