emergency Ward 10

Spotted this pigeon first thing yesterday morning sat on the garden wall.  It was still there at lunch time.  By the afternoon it had moved to a secluded corner of the garden.

This morning it’s still in the same spot and it’s only when I look at this picture on the computer that I notice that it’s injured.  It rapidly becomes clear that it’s quite badly hurt - it can’t fly.

Anniemay suggests taking it to St Tiggywinkle’s animal hospital.  Fine - but first we have to catch it.

The Tiggywinkle website suggests throwing a towel over it and then placing it in a large cardboard box.  Anniemay volunteers to be the pigeon wrangler and chases the poor thing round the garden until she finally corners it …. in a corner.

I’m not sure what to expect from the animal hospital - it looks like an abandoned farm building deep in the Buckinghamshire countryside.  I park in the bay marked ‘casualties’ and discover a queue of people with boxes.  I didn’t expect it to be like A&E on a friday night.

We patiently wait our turn and then hand our charge over to the nurse.  Nurse?  Is that the right word?  She’s wearing scrubs and a wearisome expression which says ‘not another hedgehog…’.  (The person in front of us had just brought in a hedgehog.  From Wales.)

She expertly removes the bird from the box and I’m thinking, why can’t we do it like that?  By the time she’s placed it in a plastic container - all of 10 seconds - she’s determined that the wound is old, that the wing may be broken and that it’ll probably end up on the lunchtime menu at the local pub it may need to spend its remaining time on this planet in the hospital grounds.

Anniemay has to sign a disclaimer which says once she’s handed it over she can’t have it back.    Fine by me.  She’s very subdued on the way home and talks of coming to visit. I’m thinking about pigeon pie.