I caught a wild pigeon and then ripped it’s head off.
There. That’s the story. The end.
Sounds pretty terrible, doesn’t it?
And some people will think that. No matter what happened, between the catching, and the decapitating.
But of course there’s more to the tale. There always is, isn’t there?
So if you’re still hanging around, I’ll tell it.
It starts a few weeks ago. One morning while doing chores, I was out in the duck pen cleaning their pool. And I noticed one of the most stunning pigeons I’d ever laid eyes on. Almost entirely jet black, hints of grey on his shoulders and a black beak. I became way too excited about what those genetics might do in our pigeon flock. I mentioned in passing to Jack that I’d love for him to catch that bird.
I’d see him almost daily for the next few weeks. Always in the duck yard, I assumed for the easy access to free grain.
Over the course of this time, we had some pretty intense swings in weather. 10 degrees to 34 degrees and then down to 5 - which was accompanied by nasty rain.
One day after a particularly uncomfortable and bone chilling morning on the tractor, I came inside to Jack, and Kenzie, and the pigeon. Jack had caught it.
And unfortunately, it was in a bad way.
Thin, likely full of parasites, which pigeons are quite prone too, and a protruding breast bone. Soaked right through. And oh so beautiful.
We started our protocol for pigeons like this - dewormer, inside care, and electrolytes. Before too long he ended up wrapped in a tea towel, sitting with us in the living room.
A little while into our afternoon, we realize that he smelled. Badly. Like road tar or asphalt. On closer inspection, he seemed to be greasy with something.
We deduced that somehow, this poor bird had been completely covered somehow in driveway sealant or something of the like. His feathers were leaving black residue all over the towels.
Which is how we ended up bathing him for over thirty minutes, gently trying to scrub the toxic gunk from his feathers with dish soap and warm water. The volume of nasty stuff that came off of him was staggering. It was as if this poor guy had been dunked in a bucket.
Not too long into this we could start to tell that he really wasn’t a black bird. Just a feral grey pigeon having a really tough time.
After his bath, in which we were unsuccessful removing all of the substance, we gave him another syringe full of farm food mixed with electrolytes, and wrapped him up to help him dry. He seemed grateful (I’m probably anthropomorphizing) and slept. Kenzie held him and sang to him and pet his little head feathers for hours.
Life marches on, and he had to go back to the laundry room into the kennel to continue drying. We cranked the heat and left him to nap.
By the time we were finishing dinner however, he was looking worse. Unable to keep his head up, flopping into the shavings in the bottom of his kennel, completely disinterested in food and water. While we knew his chances were low to begin with, hope sank even lower.
And that’s when I started grappling with a question that I struggle with a few times a year - is it time to end a life?
Some people would have culled him immediately once they had seen the odds stacked against him. (Let’s be honest, most people aren’t catching wild pigeons in the first place) And I realize that some people would have tried fruitlessly to find a vet to see him to give a diagnosis of “all fucked up, will likely die.” I am practical enough when it comes to livestock, and understand that in almost all cases you are doctoring yourself and crossing your fingers. And that’s generous, because in this case, this bird was wild, hours ago.
As I cleaned the kitchen before bed, I knew. In the pit of my stomach. This bird needs to be culled. Logically, he’s not going to recover. He is probably suffering, and he will die. He needs to lose his head and end his fight. (That’s not a funny way of dancing around the truth either - fastest, easiest, most foolproof way we have found of killing a pigeon, is to take the head off. With your hands.)
Jack and I had a few conversations- 90% eye contact, very little words. We both knew what the answer was. All I needed to do was say the word, and he’d have taken him out to do it in an instant. (Culling a pigeon may be simple, but it still requires skill to be humane, and Jack has that skill set)
And I opted to give him the night. Pray for him. Cross my fingers. Promise that we’d put him out of his misery if he made the morning with no improvement. End his suffering.
Before bed, I started to write this story. I caught a wild pigeon and ripped his head off.
Come morning, anyone seasoned will know the outcome. Dead bird in a kennel.
I don’t feel grief for something like this the way I would with a pet. But there’s an uneasy shift, something off inside - I had a living creature in my care, and I think I let him suffer. Longer than he needed to.
I caught a wild pigeon and should have ripped his head off.
That title hits a bit different, doesn’t it?
What’s the moral of the story? I don’t know. Life is tricky. Life is not simple. Some things just suck. I don’t know.
The end.
Time for the internet tough guys to crucify me. Shouldn’t have caught him should have let him die outside in the cold and wet, should have shot it, should have drained my already nearly empty coffers for a vet visit (emergency vet, of course) for them to say he’s walking dead, should have magically fixed him (lol the internet is a wild place sometimes) and on and on and on.
The easy thing is easy. The right thing is….hard, but sometimes even harder to find. And you won’t find it in the opinions of others.
Comments