Pigeon what?

My family has vacationed in the mountains for Memorial Day the past 5 years. Typically, we segregate: guys spend the day golfing and the girls shop and we meet back at the cabin early evening for whatever gourmet, palate-pleasing goodness my brother's in the mood to cook. Dan, you would not want to chew! Anyways, among the usual discussions of family history, traditions, and current banter, the first night my cousin and my father are sharing excerpts from the last Kiwanis meeting they attended. A guest speaker was invited and while one may think speakers talk about motivational topics, self-help, family, and civic stuff, this one introduced the rest of us to the sport of pigeon racing. Yes, I said pigeons. As in the order of species you feed bread to at the park. I shall not talk negative about these pigeons because some are worth more than my years of cosmetic dentistry plus some! Daddy and John had somewhat of a difficult time telling this without laughing, but between both of them at the meeting managed to explain that these are homing pigeons and they're trained to fly from Florida to Tennessee or wherever and whichever gets to the finish line first wins and makes many of the whole 15 members of the Pigeon Racing club very, very happy! You can imagine we had mouthfuls of questions such as, "How do they know which one won?", "What happens if they get lost and don't make it?", "What happens when they can't race anymore?", "How do you train a pigeon?", "Is wingspan important?", and most importantly, "Who picked the speaker for this particular Kiwanis meeting?".
Wow. This beats the Fainting Goat festival hands down!

A.