| road kill | | Date Created: Sep 27, 2006, 09:33 AM |
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It was probably just a coincidence and unrelated, but I first woke at 3:30 to what sounded like a puppy whimpering in a resigned pain. I got out of bed and stood in the chill of the open window. But I couldn't see anything. I can't see clearly without my glasses, but I'm usually able to make out things that don't belong -- reddish lumps of foxes scurrying quietly. There was nothing like that and with the windows swung open at angles, the sounds bounce and are hard to locate.
I went back to bed.
When I woke at 5:00, it was to the milkman and his young assistant fussing with a grey shape in the middle of the road in front of the neighbours' house. It didn't look like a puppy and it was almost blue grey, too grey for a fox cub. The milkmen had borrowed someone's empty garbage can, were using it to scoop and carry, unwilling to touch the thing -- not a bad trait to have in someone who delivers your clean white fresh milk. It looked like the lump was jerking around, more than just being podded with the plastic lid.
I got my glasses.
The guys were dumping it out into a gap in the bushes across the road, soft sheltered ground where it might be comfortable. They moved out of the way and I could see it was a pigeon. It flopped its head around once, the rest of its body inert.
I was transfixed.
Was the bird in agony? Should it be put out of its misery? Is there someone you call and notify? There must be, for puppies; but for pigeons? The milkmen were up the hill, now, bottles rattling; back to their day. I got dressed, made the kids' lunches.
I thought about agony and about death all day long. And Congo and war. And how God doesn't seem to be the kind of God who ensures all sharp corners of existence are shielded in styrofoam. And how the comfortable people in the west are attracted to the computer games or the action films or reading Elmore Leonard.
When I got home from work that evening, the pigeon was gone. |
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