Life and death

The cat is waiting for the rat. The rat, whom I have only seen once since that video, but who looks to be either older and stronger or a different rat, may have found a way into the roof. Maybe it’s not the rats. Maybe it’s squirrels. It’s someone that occasionally hops about above the ceiling of the kitchen, which is under its own sloping tiled roof.

My cats sit on the top of the kitchen counters staring at a hole that seems to lead into the space. They make that chittering mewl when whoever it is scampers above us.

Anyway, as a result of this I was not sad to see the cat watching for the rat. Though I don’t really like domestic animals killing wild animals. That’s like people or cats or planes or pollution killing wild animals. It’s like our horrible miasma, like the harm we do is vicarious as well as immediate. Everything we touch turns to harm. So, I’d rather the foxes scared the rats out of my roof. But the foxes don’t care about my roof. Or maybe the foxes are in the roof? No.

I’d like bats in the roof. But I don’t think they scamper.

I was also glad to see the cat watching for the rat because that meant she wasn’t watching for the pigeon.

Today, I went to feed the crows and then go for a trot. I was happy to see all five Divines and all three Unbraves as well as both Driveways. I think I also saw the unnamed mystery crow.

Then I headed off down the road. Five hundred yards and something flutter-scuttled away from me.

A pigeon who’d been run over. I saw the feathers in the road. I saw open wounds on the sides of his body. One wing torn. The legs broken. I thought, I cannot turn away. At the same time, what can I do? OK, get the pigeon euthanised. But that meant a vet or something and I just thought about me and the pigeon and work and the terrified pigeon. The agonised pigeon.

I couldn’t leave the pigeon on the pavement. I couldn’t leave the pigeon there on the pavement.

I took off my top and caught the pigeon. This wasn’t easy and I felt cruel. But when I caught the pigeon and held the pigeon, the pigeon was still and calm and I felt that it was good.

I couldn’t hold the pigeon for ever. Or even until the pigeon died. (Why not? - Ed.)

I thought I would make a safe place for the pigeon to die as a wild animal. Not on a pavement.

There is no safe space for a wild animal.

To kill the pigeon would be kinder.

But I didn’t know how to kill a pigeon or whether on this day (it was New Year’s Day) I could find anyone to kill a pigeon before I had to go to work. And I thought of what felt… honest. And what felt honest was not to leave the pigeon on the pavement but to let the pigeon die as a wild pigeon.

Maybe this is just a way to feel better about letting the pigeon die while doing something not everyone would do but not doing enough to actually make things better for the pigeon, by killing the pigeon.

Maybe it's all about me wanting to be a person who does something but not being willing to put myself out enough to actually do something meaningful.

Yeah. That's about right.

Still.

I wanted to put the pigeon in a place where cats and dogs and people couldn’t scare him. I thought of a box. In the garden. Under another box. With suet pellets and water. In case... (That's dying as a wild pigeon? You think?? - Ed.)

But the pigeon was terrified as soon as I unbundled him from my top. He had felt safe-ish, now he did not. He did not want my box. He wanted to get away from me. He wanted to be in the bushes and so I let the pigeon stay in the bushes, like a wild pigeon, and I thought of the pigeon and how I can’t do the right thing.

I thought about how seeing, witnessing, accompanying is not enough, not for a pigeon. I might say to the pigeon, ‘I feel you’. But I can’t really. And even if I could, could the pigeon know and feel my feeling him? I mean, what can I ever do for a wild animal in pain?

Apart from kill him.

I went to work.

I didn't leave food for the foxes. There's a pigeon.