Barney picks up a dead pigeon or dove from a Washington, D.C. street.
Barney brings the bird into his home. Pigeons and doves constitute the bird family Columbidae within the order Columbiformes, which include some 300 species of near passerines. The Holy Spirit is sometimes represented in art by a dove. This dead bird is a 'metaphor' for Barney (who represents the Holy Spirit) having become corrupt; for recall that he sells illegally obtained items that belonged to Hannibal Lecter.
The upper right corner of a photograph in Starling's work area. The two sets of three digits each, ostensibly part of an FBI file or evidence item number, are actually biblical references: '189' is a reference to Genesis (the first book of the bible, thus the '1'), chapter 8, verse 9, which is associated with Barney's actions above, in that the dead bird Barney handles represents a dove: "But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark."[New International Version] The '253' reference will be discussed later in the analysis.
