pidgie's story

Yesterday afternoon, Brian came home from driving Jordan to his Chinese tuition class and announced that he'd seen a bird lying hurt on the road -- probably hit by a car -- and that he was going back out to see if he could save it. He left his car parked outside our home and walked back out to the road with a hand towel.

Fifteen minutes later, he carried the hurt bird back into the house.

When he had first caught sight of it while driving home, it was lying on the side of the road, too exhausted and hurt to fly. Brian had been unable to stop his car because of traffic, but he was afraid that it would be a matter of time before the bird moved and someone ended up driving over it.

Fortunately, in the five minutes that it took him to park the car at home, grab a towel and walk-run to to the spot where he'd seen it, the bird was still there. It was a pigeon.

It panicked when it saw Brian approaching and tried to fly across the road, but it was clearly exhausted and because its leg was hurt, it was unable to land on a tree. Eventually it simply plummeted down onto the middle of the road.

God must have been looking out for it, because that usually busy road happened to be clear of traffic, and Brian managed to dash onto the road and gently pick it up.

He wrapped it in the towel and brought it home. We were pretty certain its leg was hurt or broken, but to our untrained eye, the pigeon was still alert and its heart beat strongly. That was enough for us.

We decided to take it to the vet to see if he could do anything to help it.

But it was a Sunday, and our vet was closed. We drove to the next nearest animal clinic to see if it was, by any chance, open. Fortunately, they were. But they were closed for their lunch break and would only open again at 2pm.

As it was only a little past 1pm, we decided to drive home again and see if we could give the pigeon a little water. We had no idea how long the poor thing had been lying on the road before Brian had spotted it. And with the weather being so hot and humid lately, we were afraid it would be dehydrated.

So we got home, carried it into the kitchen and gently tried to feed it some water. It was thirsty, because it caught on to what we were trying to do pretty quickly, and drank some.

We filled a small little container with more water, just in case, and then we decided to drive to the clinic again. As we had no appointment, we thought it would be a good idea to get there before it opened so that we wouldn't have to wait too long to see the vet.

We waited outside for about 15 minutes before the vet opened. In the meantime, we stroked the pigeon, talked to it and watched to make sure it was okay. It seemed all right, and our hopes were high.

We finally got to see the vet. But the prognosis wasn't good. She checked and found that its leg wasn't broken, but that its thigh was traumatised. And she said that with birds, broken legs could easily be set but nothing could be done when their thighs were damaged or traumatised.

That area, apparently, has lots of nerves, and it is such a delicate network that operations are very difficult to perform. If we really wanted to, we could take it home and see if it would eventually heal on its own but she said the bird would not be able to return to the wild anyway because it would be unable to fend for itself.

In instances like this, she said, if we hadn't come along and picked it up, the bird would likely have died eventually. Even if we decided to take the chance and care for it at home, she said healing could take a few months and there was still no guarantee that it would survive.

Also, she said, the bird had gone into shock. She recommended euthanasia.

Knowing that what she said made sense did not make it easy. I wept then and there, and Brian had to take care of the paperwork needed to put down the pigeon. Because we had to register it as a pet, he christened it Pidgie.

Oh, how I wish things had turned out differently.

In that hour or so of non-stop activity trying to save Pidgie, we had all bonded -- as fellow creatures of God's kingdom, each with a soul.

We said goodbye to Pidgie, and sent her into God's care with love and light.

As we drove home, we talked about it. Much as we mourn having had to make the decision to end a life, we also have no regrets about all that we tried to do to save Pidgie.

Having seen a bird, or any animal or creature for that matter, lying hurt, we couldn't walk away from it without trying to see if anything could be done for it.

At least we'd tried. And I like to think that Pidgie knew that too.

God bless you, Pidgie. We're just glad you're not in pain any more, and are in the company of God and the angels.