Herb Caen, famed and late San Francisco columnist, owns the concept of pigeons being "feathered rats" ...
Interesting... I didn't know that. I grew up in NJ and CT, but my husband is from the SF Bay Area. We spent a lot of time out there during the early to mid-90s... we practically lived there. I became a semi-regular reader of Herb Caen's columns in the Chronicle back then. He was definitely a legendary figure in the Bay Area. Didn't he have a street in SF named after him?