Dove Rescue

I was getting ready for my upholstery class at lunchtime today, and was looking at Facebook (as you do) while I drank my coffee.  Suddenly I saw a post – someone had seen an injured “pigeon” lying by the side of the road near here and had “not had time to help it” but hoped someone would.  Then there were a number of other comments, some nasty and mentioning kicking it.  From the photo it was not a pigeon at all (not that it matters really what sort of bird it was), but a collared dove.

I put my coat on and went straight upstairs to find R – as I did so I said loudly “I am about to do something very unwise”.  So of course we both went straight out to try to find it.  Strangely enough, we did find it immediately (R spotted it first) and I managed to pick it up with no real difficulty; it was very much alive though and did not seem badly injured.  We had bought a box but neglected to bring a towel to put it on, so I put my pashmina in the bottom of it (my Christmas present from R!).

I had actually given a little thought in advance to what we were going to do next, and we went straight over to our vet practice “Wilsons” which luckily was only a few streets away.  They took it with no demure and (this really amazed me), wouldn’t accept the payment for its treatment which we did offer.  The bird (she apparently) was not badly injured.  The vet rang me tonight and said that they had named it “Dottie” and that she was taking it home that night with the intention of releasing it tomorrow.

We do have form for this kind of thing as R and I once climbed into a muddy ditch to pull a sheep out, and for a while R was known at work as “The Swan Sentinel” for climbing into the stream which runs through the business park at South Gyle to save some cygnets which were trapped under a waterfall.  He doesn’t like to talk about it, but he did appear on the front page of the corporate newspaper for this feat of bravery (it was actually because the father swan had a go at him).

Anyway, at the risk of sounding sententious, there is an Egyptian myth that after death your heart is weighed against the feather of truth, and if your good deeds outweigh your bad ones you go to heaven and don’t get eaten by a hippopotamus.   So every bit we can do in this life counts.