So I'm really wondering if I ever should have gotten into pet pigeons. Is everybody else's experience just a bottomless well of tragedy? My last two 'pretty pigeons' - the ones from the first batch of 9 - let their chick die last night. They've been good parents. They laid two eggs. I added another egg that a pair had abandoned when they flew away just to see if it would work. One hatched and the other two were bad. The baby had grown to a little butterball about 3 inches long in a month or so, with keratin-coated feathers starting to poke out all over, and its crop was always stuffed full.
I had noticed they weren't sitting in the nest all the time any more, but I saw them down there frequently. I knew this was entirely the wrong time of year to be raising a chick, but I had no idea that they didn't have any instincts to keep a cold baby warm. This morning there it was, slumped over dead. Neck flopping, mouth open, cold as a stone. I was actually angry at the parents, who I like and anthropomorphize probably more than is healthy.
I used a post-hole digger to make a quick 8-inch hole in the edge of the yard and brought it out. I really took my time looking it over, sitting there over the hole in the dirt, and wondered at just how big it had grown from the little pigeon-egg sized wiggly-worm it was just weeks ago. In the end putting it in the hole was too much for me right then. I rationalized I was laying it out for Puff and Rooty to say goodbye to. And it was so cold. I put it under the brooder bulbs out away from the nest so it could go out warm at least.
I can see into their big enclosure through my east picture windows, and later in the morning I sat there for awhile watching the parents. I wanted to see them emoting, grieving for some reason. Puff was just standing at the food dish absent-mindedly stuffing his crop. Then I thought I saw the baby move. And I stared at it. Then it did move. And I stared at it. From that point on I'm not entirely convinced I did not suffer a trauma-induced hallucination. I went outside and turned the baby right-side-up in a little nest made out of soft cloth, this time exactly under the center of heat from both bulbs. After several minutes it was moving around so much I figured out it was uncomfortable from the heat. I repaired Lazarus to its nest and did a bunch of obsessive things to heat and measure the temperature of the nest chamber. Rooty and Puff started taking interest immediately and both came over and fussed around with the nest and shoved yet more food into baby's little crop. And it just sat there with its head up and barely-openable eyes shut when they went away. Here and there giving a little twitchy turn of the head like nothing had happened.
So when I get home from work tonight I'll do my best to not be shocked by whatever I find. A dead bird. An extra bird. A mass pigeon suicide, somehow by hanging, because that would be the most outlandishly horrific-looking. I really should have figured out, after the raccoon attack, the pneumonic death in my hands with failed mouth-to-mouth, the mass fly-away - in these TWO MONTHS - that I should not be getting so attached to these birds. Some people are slow learners.
I had noticed they weren't sitting in the nest all the time any more, but I saw them down there frequently. I knew this was entirely the wrong time of year to be raising a chick, but I had no idea that they didn't have any instincts to keep a cold baby warm. This morning there it was, slumped over dead. Neck flopping, mouth open, cold as a stone. I was actually angry at the parents, who I like and anthropomorphize probably more than is healthy.
I used a post-hole digger to make a quick 8-inch hole in the edge of the yard and brought it out. I really took my time looking it over, sitting there over the hole in the dirt, and wondered at just how big it had grown from the little pigeon-egg sized wiggly-worm it was just weeks ago. In the end putting it in the hole was too much for me right then. I rationalized I was laying it out for Puff and Rooty to say goodbye to. And it was so cold. I put it under the brooder bulbs out away from the nest so it could go out warm at least.
I can see into their big enclosure through my east picture windows, and later in the morning I sat there for awhile watching the parents. I wanted to see them emoting, grieving for some reason. Puff was just standing at the food dish absent-mindedly stuffing his crop. Then I thought I saw the baby move. And I stared at it. Then it did move. And I stared at it. From that point on I'm not entirely convinced I did not suffer a trauma-induced hallucination. I went outside and turned the baby right-side-up in a little nest made out of soft cloth, this time exactly under the center of heat from both bulbs. After several minutes it was moving around so much I figured out it was uncomfortable from the heat. I repaired Lazarus to its nest and did a bunch of obsessive things to heat and measure the temperature of the nest chamber. Rooty and Puff started taking interest immediately and both came over and fussed around with the nest and shoved yet more food into baby's little crop. And it just sat there with its head up and barely-openable eyes shut when they went away. Here and there giving a little twitchy turn of the head like nothing had happened.
So when I get home from work tonight I'll do my best to not be shocked by whatever I find. A dead bird. An extra bird. A mass pigeon suicide, somehow by hanging, because that would be the most outlandishly horrific-looking. I really should have figured out, after the raccoon attack, the pneumonic death in my hands with failed mouth-to-mouth, the mass fly-away - in these TWO MONTHS - that I should not be getting so attached to these birds. Some people are slow learners.
This post also appears on a pigeon forum, where it was written by some guy who is exactly the same person as me.
Here's the link to the forum: http://www.pigeons.biz/forums/f6/the-horror-65473.html#post708722
ReplyDeleteI had to include it here because the people who know all about pigeons tell me there that this happens routinely to cold baby pigeons. Also there's a link to a video of the little zombie bird speaking later that night.