Barmy Blue's Bland Blog

Cheers all for the condolences. School got back to normal pretty quickly but the first business lesson was a bit uncomfortable for a little while.

Anyway, let’s not get depressed again.
Friday and Saturday have nothing eventful about them, except for the fact that the UK had zero votes in the Eurovision song contest until I flipped over again and found we’d gained some and weren’t at the bottom. I thank them for their sympathy votes but I’d rather we had got zero. Can’t complain though, at least we didn’t win. I couldn’t be bothered to watch the Eurovision song contest. Last year I had nothing better to do (Even though it probably interrupted Doctor Who then, but if that was the case then I wasn’t as sci-fi mad as I am now). Like I said, I didn’t really stick around for the voting, because Two Pints was on and I seem to have started liking watching it.
Oh, and on Friday I stayed late to finish up some last minute IT work.

Sunday was the really eventful day though. Late in the afternoon, mum called me and told me to go into the kitchen, slowly, because there was a pigeon on the windowsill outside. So I went to see. It may have flinched a little but it didn’t fly. I grabbed an old towel and went out to catch it. I was sure I wouldn’t catch it. I had to step over the thorns. It shuffled right into the corner, trapping itself (because the thorns were too high for it to just up and fly away). I called it a lot of pet names, like you do when something has no name. Angel was the most commonly used name, hence the title of this entry.
After a few minutes of talking to it and convincing myself that I couldn’t catch it, I made a grab for it and caught it. It struggled a bit, but I had it’s wings, like they show you how to do in those vet programs and called for mum to do something. She got Henry’s old cat carrier, put in clean newspaper and we put it in there. We gave it some seeds, mealworms and water but it wouldn’t touch them. Mum had to get the washing from the laundrette. I listened out for pigeons on the roof, because the sparrows are already feeding fat little fledglings, so why shouldn’t the pigeons have done the same? It seemed quite small I suppose, but I’ve never held a pigeon before, so I couldn’t really tell, and guessing sizes is like estimating distance or guessing age for me, I can’t really do it. I gave it some bread, but it wouldn’t touch anything. I wondered if it’s wings were damaged, so I put on the gardening gloves, so as not to get an infection from it but also so it wouldn’t have my scent on it (in case it was a fledgling.) I took it out, though I had to do it one handedly, so one wing was already flapping. That seemed fine, so I had to shift it around a bit to trap that wing and let the other one flap. It wouldn’t flap so I gently stretched it’s wing out to see if that hurt it. It didn’t struggle so I concluded that it just didn’t want to flap. I put it back in the box and it retreated to the furthest corner from me (A good lesson to learn, beware of humans). I covered it back up with the towel because it looked like it was closing it’s eyes to sleep. Just before mum went for her shower, in the evening, I asked if she fancied seeing it again,, to see if it had improved. It was still roughly where I’d left it. I suggested she look at it’s wings because I couldn’t tell. So I repeated the same process as before. Now the other wing seemed better than the first. Mum suggested we see if it could fly, but I had to turn it round for that. She opened the door and we went into the garden (we have a rather small garden) I opened my hands and it just stood there. I moved my hands to give it a little incentive, it flapped onto the floor. I easily caught it again and we tried again. It did the same thing. But it landed in a tricky little spot and I told mum to catch it with the towel because I couldn’t reach. She was too slow and it waddled into the thorns. We tried to get it but it went through the fence and was lost to us. We scattered a big helping of seeds and mealworms on the floor to entice it back, but it didn’t come.

This morning, after looking out of my window several times, I spotted a group of three feral pigeons. One was grey with the typical black stripes on it’s wings (it wasn’t Angel), one was a darker grey but it had the green tint to it’s neck (angel’s green neck was only noticeable up close) and then I saw a smaller pigeon with them, scoffing as many seeds as it could (It had markings like Angel and looked about right, so I guessed it could be Angel). Then they all flew away, but I went outside anyway, in case it hadn’t flown with them and I could still catch it. It wasn’t on the ground. I looked up to the roof and saw them all perched there. The smaller one flew away as fast as it could when I looked up, perhaps it remembered me. I’m almost sure it was Angel, and if it was, then we know it can fly now. Mum guessed it might have just been tired. We hope it’s angel because we have several cats, about 3-5 prowling around our neighbourhood, and now Henry’s territory’s up for grabs. We found a lot of pigeon feathers earlier, at the back of the garden. We guessed a pigeon had been cornered by a cat.
I wondered if it could've been Angel's mother (if it was a fledgling).

Jason's weekend tops mine though, he said that he got shot with an arrow. He does archery. He didn't need hospitalisation though.

Bluebiird out.