Monday, April 03, 2006

 

Dead Pigeons

My wife and I were visiting a National Trust site at Cannon’s Ashby when we walked across the road to see an old church. Crossing the road we walked past a pigeon pecking happily away on the ground, the unusual thing about this pigeon was it had a band around its leg. Whether this indicated a homing pigeon or an endangered pigeon I will never know.
When we came out of the church and cemetery we walked back round the site and to the car, taking a different route. Driving back home we passed the church and I saw the body of the pigeon by the side of the road. This struck me as quite odd. Not sad, not tragic, just strange. Here was this creature, largely regarded as vermin, and the fact that I saw it was dead struck some sort of cord within me and I didn’t know why.

Now that I have written this I think I understand. Pigeons, for the most part, are anonymous and one wouldn’t pay much attention to a dead one by the side of the road. But because of this band I was able to recognize this pigeon in death and it formed a link of some sort. Anonymity helps with distance and detachment.

Thinking back, this is dealt with in quite a bit of detail in David Grossman’s book, On Killing. Not a pleasant book, but very interesting and well written.

So the point of this is, if you see a pigeon with a band on its leg by the side of the road, shoo it away.

The bullet of the day:

.338 Lapua Magnum

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