Yesterday, my two boys and I were waiting at the bus-stop. It was nine-thirty, sunny, and we were on our way to the older boy’s summer baseball game.
“Hey,” said the oldest. “Look at this.”
Right by the bench in the bus-shelter was a small pigeon. It was dark in colour, frail, about half the size of an adult. It was moving slowly and it couldn’t fly.
“Be careful,” I said. “I think it’s a baby pigeon. It got separated from its mother. Maybe it fell from the nest.”
“What’s gonna happen to it?” said my six year-old.
“This isn’t TV,” I said. “Usually nature takes its course. It’s likely something will eat it.”
My older boy gently ushered the pigeon away from the bus-shelter and to a bush in a community garden twenty feet away. It seemed to settle a little underneath the bush. I didn’t really know what was going to happen to it. Later on, I was able to think of a few families (families with daughters) who would have taken it home and put it in a shoebox with some paper towels.
The bus took about five minutes to come. While we were waiting, my older boy raised his head and said: ‘Uh-Oh!”
The little pigeon was wandering out into Main Street, which was where we were. It didn’t look like it had a plan at all. The three of us watched helplessly.
Thirty seconds later a spiffy white Hyundai came north up the street towards us. There was a man in the driver’s seat, and he was talking to a pretty girl next to him. They came right at the pigeon.
At the last second, he saw the bird in front of him and slowed down just a little. There was a terrible Splutch! and both he and his girlfriend made an awkward and embarrassed face, as if they had gone into a store to register their wedding china and inadvertently knocked over a display. There was nothing left of the pigeon save for a red and grey pile on the asphalt. The car drove one towards downtown.
Almost immediately, a pair of crows lit on the streetlaps directly above the pigeon’s body and began to caw. The word seemed to spread, and soon there was a small murder of them perched above the splat on the road. The haste of their arrival was unsettling.
“See,” I said to the two boys when we were on the bus a few minutes later. “That’s what happens to something when it’s parents aren’t there to look after it.” I really didn’t know what else to say, and they didn’t seem to fazed by the whole thing. “Everyone needs parents.”
When we came back at midday, we passed by the same spot. The pigeon was already a dried and dusty splotch on the road. The kids looked on with fascination. It’s humbling to see how life just fades away under the onslaught of force and heat.
