Nikola Tesla’s Love Letters to Pigeons
Nikola Tesla, the wizard behind alternating current, spent his last years feeding—and romantically doting on—New York City pigeons. He reserved the penthouse suite of the Hotel New Yorker primarily so his feathered companions could perch on the windowsill, and he paid hefty room-service bills just to keep them in seeds and water. Tesla claimed he loved a particular white pigeon “as a man loves a woman,” insisting the bird visited him nightly so they could communicate soul-to-soul. Friends worried the brilliant inventor who once electrified the world was now lost in coo-filled daydreams.
Far from a fleeting infatuation, Tesla devoted hours to nursing injured pigeons back to health, fashioning splints and miniature crutches with the precision of an engineer. When his beloved white pigeon died, he said “a light went out” in his life and he lost the drive to create. The image of Tesla—surrounded by blueprints yet whispering lullabies to birds—reminds us that genius often walks wing-in-wing with eccentricity.
