Chrass Landing

I was sitting at a bar last night and a guy came up beside me and ordered two Tanqueray shots.  I’ve never really seen any other than myself order Tanqueray so I paid attention.

The man ordering was short, black, and in pretty good shape.  But most notably was the tattoo on his forearm that said “One Day at a Time”.

[Part 1: Bird in Hand]

Yesterday morning I checked in on Hindenburg and saw that he had halfway pulled off his bandage and his wing was now held at an unnatural angle.

Old bandage coming loose, left wing at weird angle (hard to see in this photo).

I felt bad about subjecting him to more stress, but I figured a whole bunch of stress is better than being dead so I re-wrapped his wing using self-sticking guaze (which is much easier to use).

Twenty-four hours later the bandage is still holding and Hindenburg looks to be doing okay.  He’s now standing and hopping around okay, although he seems to just cower at the far end of the cage at the farthest point away from the door to the room.

New bandage and Hindenburg standing on his own two feet

I can’t tell if he’s eaten or drank anything since I put him in the cage.  He’s definitely shitting just fine.  I’m not sure what to do, but I suspect that survival instinct will overcome whatever fear he has and eventually he’ll drink or eat.

With a name like "Hindenburg" you know everything has to work out okay. I haven't changed the paper yet because I'm trying not to stress him out too much.

I’m planning on going camping for a couple of days, so hopefully I won’t come home to a dead pigeon.  Hopefully the house being quite will help him relax.

[Part 3: Bye Bye Birdie]

I was working on my motorcycle in front of my house today when I heard a loud crash.  I looked up and saw a pigeon flopping around on the sidewalk.  It’s wing was obviously broken.

Injured bird on the sidewalk

“Shit! Now I have to kill the thing,” I thought to myself.

I do my best to keep the number of small animals I kill to a minimum so I decided to hit Google and found instructions about how to mend a pigeon’s broken wing.

I figured I’d give it a shot.  I had a large dog crate in my storage room which I figured might just be big enough for a pigeon.  I set it up in one of my spare bedrooms. I lined the bottom of the cage with some old towels and then a layer of newspaper.

Cage suitable for 100 pound dog or 8-ounce pigeon

The bird was still standing in the middle of the sidewalk looking pretty unhappy but alert.

I raided my first aid kit in my bathroom.  I had some gauze tape, but not the self-sticking type that the web site recommends.  No problem, I have plenty of duct tape.

Not sure how the bird would react, I put on some heavy work gloves and caught the bird –luckily it wasn’t able to move very quickly.  I put the bird in a cardboard box while I donned some nitrile gloves as a precaution against catching some unspecific horrible bird-borne disease that my mother always warned me about when I was a kid.

Pigeon ER

It took two tries to get the bird bandaged up.  Wild birds are not very cooperative when it comes to being manhandled by giant mammals.

The pigeon did its best to get out of my clutches and I was really worried that it would hurt itself.  I remember as a kid finding an injured bird and picking it up (I suppose I didn’t listen to my mother back then) –it was so scared that it died after a few minutes.

As I tried to wrap the tape around the broken wing, under the good wing, and in front of the pigeon’s feet the bird would thrash around.  I eventually got about two feet of gauze around the bird, but I noticed that it kept sticking its feet under the tape.  No good.

I unwrapped the bird and put it back in the box so it could calm down a bit.  It rolled over onto its back and was motionless except for its chest which was indicating the bird was breathing very hard.

Pigeon Recovery Room

I split the gauze down the middle to make it narrower and tried again.  This time it worked.  I duct taped the end of the gauze in place, put the bird back in the box and brought it inside and put it in the dog cage.  I gave it a dish of water and then drove off to the pharmacy to get better gauze and some bird seed.

When I got back, the pigeon was exactly where I left it.  It was still alive and appeared alert, but hadn’t moved a millimeter.

Confined Convalescing

I’m not even sure why I’m helping the pigeon since they shit on my car and motorcycles all the time and I’ve often fantasized about shooting them.

The downside of one more pigeon

I guess I have too much time on my hands.

[Part 2: Sitting Pigeon-toed at a Diamond Commode]