I had a fascinating experience over the weekend. On Thursday night I found a young pigeon, full-feathered but not quite adult, sitting on the pavement. She or he didn’t fly away as I walked close by, and I thought, “that’s strange” but continued on my way.

Twenty minutes later the bird was still there as I made my way home from the shops. I approached, it allowed me to pick it up and I took it home. There were no parents around, watching the youngster from above, and if there had been I’d have left well alone.

But what was wrong with the bird? I had no idea and still don’t know. I’ve no photos to show you—the one to the left is generic. All pigeons, you’d think, are generic—but look at them closely, they have lots of different personalities and faces.

The pigeon was clean, apparently disease-free and appeared in excellent condition. It just couldn’t fly. It wasn’t tame, and never did become tame, although it allowed me to hand-feed it using a pet syringe without resistance. I gave it a mix of chicken layer pellets and water all mashed up into a puree, following advice I found online. Friday and Saturday it refused to eat of its own volition and didn’t do very much. It seemed either exhausted or ill. It picked up within hours of its first hand-feed, just 5ml of gloop.

I named the little creature Nevermore, not intending to keep it unless the bird was likely to die if set free but wanting to have something to call it other than just ‘pigeon’. I think it was a hen but I can’t be certain.

I nursed the baby Nevermore all the way through to late Sunday afternoon, by which time s/he had proven her/himself capable at last of feeding and drinking without help, and of sustained flight in our living room (cats obviously excluded for a time). Maybe it was only just weaning when I found it, perhaps it had crashed and was simply stunned. I’ll never know. If I hadn’t helped that pigeon I’m genuinely doubtful many others would have intervened, or even noticed it sitting and suffering from confusion if not illness.

I do know the encounter was my second in two years with a pigeon needing help, the last having been a racing pigeon that crash-landed in our garden.

Continue Reading »

It’s been quite a week, hasn’t it? It was last Sunday that I first noticed The Story (as I shall refer to the topic causing a big media feeding frenzy right now, and for the foreseeable future, I guess). It was buried some way down in the pile of media priorities and a little voice in my head (probably my own, hopefully my own!) said, “This is going to change, and fast” and it did. By Monday morning, The Story was front-page headline gobsmacking, fear-inducing NEWS. Blimey. We never hear about the many, many thousands of people who die of malaria in Africa every year, do we?  Nor do we see a rising panic over the probably entirely preventable deaths of thousands of old people who catch the flu in the UK every winter.

A needless death is a needless death, don’t get me wrong, but if we don’t contextualise everything that beams into our heads then we’re on a fast-track to losing the minds we have by drowning them in suspicion, superstition and panic. An inability to put things into perspective is a sure way of ending up on Crazy Street, where the pavement is painted with red spots, all the houses are pink and the neighbours all wear surgical masks.

I’m off on Monday with my beloved to go see rock star Pink at the O2 Arena in London (you know the place—it was once called the Millennium Dome and was famous for the world over for being hugely expensive and very crap). Yes, we’re going at the onset of a pandemic to hear a woman sing Get The Party Started. We’ll effectively be in a confined space with, what, 40,000 other people? I don’t know the exact capacity of the O2 Arena. It may be much higher, it may be considerably less. But let’s face it, with The Story telling us The Thing has arrived in London, we know that we’re kind of putting ourselves potentially in harm’s way. But not only because of the presence of The Thing. That, to be honest, is small fry compared to the far greater chances every day of being mugged, or otherwise attacked, or tripping over your own shoelaces, or being hit by a bus or car.

Continue Reading »