Quinceanera? A wedding? A prom in April? For several weeks, on weekends, there has been a low-key festive event in an Echo Park Avenue front yard: ten or twelve teen-ish looking kids practicing dancing. They line up facing each other, ostensibly preparing for some kind of formal event or performance in front of the house at Effie and EP Ave. (northwest corner). If there was music, it was turned way low. Same house where my daughter and I often stop to pat one of our favorite dogs -- a beauty, it looks like a coyote-shepherd mix -- through the iron bars of the fence.

Then, this Saturday, the day before Easter, my husband passed the Effie house on his way to Delilah's Bakery and witnessed a variation in the scene. The boys wore elaborate matching tan suits and hats with ribbons. A stretch limo was parked in front. Show time!

Doves: Saturday, in addition to publishing a Chicken Corner post about the doves in Echo Park, I also posted a note on the Echo Park Animal Alliance's list about the tame, vulnerable birds I saw at Echo Park Lake this past weekend. One of the people who responded said the doves "are probably from one of those occasions where [people] release a flock of white doves for dramatic purposes - tame and not able to fend for themselves." Early Easter celebration? A Film crew?

Steve Roche posted on the EP Animal Alliance list the following about "laughing doves" and "mourning doves":

I researched these birds last year after two white ones "fell from the sky" into my yard, and my landlord's dogs got one of them. I rescued the other one, put it in a cage to recover, and later on I bought a mate for it at a local pet store ($12). What I found out is: they are either laughing doves or mourning doves, they don't fly well, they don't fly far, they don't nest very well (they'll lay an egg on a bare windowsill), and the males are impossible to tell from the females. Also, they trade roles, girls acting like boys and boys acting like girls. They don't know enough to be afraid of cats or dogs.

So, yes, anyone with a spare cage should scoop up at least one or two, or they're doomed. They walk around on the ground like chickens and are not afraid of dogs. Ours have laid at least 12 eggs in the past year, and when the babies grow old enough the father usually attacks them (badly) so you have to re-cage them or release them. We've got them all over my yard at Whitmore and Allesandro. They make great pets, by the way, and for me, were something to watch during the long hours sitting on my porch, waiting out months of chemotherapy (which is thankfully over).

Laughing doves and mourning doves. One or the other. Heartbreaking either way.

(Steve also emailed me that he used to live on Avon Street next door to the famous, lovable Lucy the dog (who is part wolf) and her guardians Joe and Heather D'Augustine, all of whom he describes affectionately even though Lucy ate his pet catfish.)