Post by Nachtkern on Feb 13, 2022 12:52:00 GMT 1
It's been a little while since I've been around (not just on the forum - I've been scarce everywhere), so I thought I'd make a brief little life update!
Been a lot of things on my end - had something of a family emergency, got sick for a few days (not covid, I think), finally had a chance to play DnD again after a few months, got Pokémon Shining Pearl and Legends Arceus (secondhand, since we're over giving Nintendo more money for their crunched, unfinished Pokémon games lol), but probably the most bizarre and stressful occurrence of the last few weeks was this week's pigeon incident.
Thursday afternoon/early evening, I was out for a long walk with my housemate astraldreams , and on our way home, we ran into a pigeon. Now, this is a pretty common occurrence - I live in a city, and there are many pigeons to run into, but this one seemed sort of lost. It was sitting on the corner of a doorstep, huddled up, and either didn't feel threatened by our presence... or was just really, really slow. My litmus test to determine if a pigeon is fine on its own is that a healthy pigeon won't let you pick it up, and will be gone before you could even hope to grab it, but it turns out that if that test fails, you're holding a pigeon in your hands.
A bit of context for people less familiar with pigeons (as I've found out - a lot of people I talked to over the last couple days seemed bewildered by my decision to yoink a pigeon off the street): the common pigeon isn't a truly wild animal. They're domesticated, and the pigeons you see outside aren't wild, but feral (normally). Because pigeons are a domesticated species, they're well-adapted to living with humans, and don't really have any natural defenses of their own. Although you probably won't be able to catch and keep a feral pigeon (they're pretty quick), a few generations of being feral hasn't changed the birds significantly, or back into a wild type. This means that pretty much the only differences between a street pigeon and a fancy pigeon (the domestic kind kept by bird keepers), are appearance (fancy pigeons are often bred for their looks), and whether they were socialized by people. They're much more like chickens than they are like, say, jackdaws or robins.
All that aside, I figured the pigeon I found must have been a pet pigeon, judging by the way it responded to being handled. Pigeons have poor vision in the dark which makes it difficult for them to fly at night, and my friend suggested it might have been fawning when it easily let me handle it, but either way, it didn't respond as a feral pigeon would. So I took it home with me... and then just kind of had a pigeon in my house?
Originally, I was going to take it back where I found it in the morning, with the reasoning that it might have been someone's free-roaming pigeon that just didn't make it home before dark, and got stuck where it was because of its poor dark vision. But then, once I had it in my house, I realized this pigeon is actually a baby.
If you look closely, you can still see its baby feathers stick out of its head, and its coat is unfinished in some places, like the bald area around its beak, and the bald patches under its wings (not pictured). I'm honestly not 100% sure this thing can fly much yet, if at all, lol. I let it free-roam my room, since I don't have anything like a bird cage, but I haven't seen it fly. At night, I made a make-shift nest for it consisting of a crate on its side with a water-proof protective mattress cover inside, and a sweater draped over the top to give it the sense of a safe hideaway. It seemed to take to that well. It also seemed generally comfortable with our presence and being close to us, although not with being physically touched.
The next morning, after making sure it ate something (was really worried it couldn't eat seed yet and I'd have to handfeed it peas or something, but thankfully that wasn't the case) we went back to where we found it and tried ringing some doors - it couldn't have been outside for very long, considering it wasn't totally malnourished (or grabbed by a cat before I grabbed it), and I don't think it could have gone far considering it's very young. Nobody opened, so I popped some notes in people's mailboxes asking to contact me if they lost this pigeon. In retrospect, probably a very strange note to receive without the context of it being domestic. When nobody responded to that, either, and there were no reports of missing pigeons on Facebook, I called the local animal rescue services, and they came and picked it up. The lady on the phone did NOT seem convinced I found a domestic pigeon and didn't just like... kidnap a street pigeon - she was asking me to try putting it outside, to see if it'd fly off, and suggested I put it in a box while waiting for the animal rescue service to come pick it up LMAO. Thankfully the people who actually came for it recognized it was a very young fancy pigeon.
The local animal rescue service here works with vets and shelters, so they make sure animals they find are taken care of, and either released back into the wild (if they are wild), or they are sheltered while they search for its owner, until a certain point, after which they are put up for adoption. It would be the best case scenario, but I'm not too sure they'll be able to find its original owner, either... but even if they don't, it will probably be adopted out to someone else, who will take good care of it. It's a very pretty, and well-mannered pigeon.
I'm still very worried about it, and I almost wish I kept it... It wouldn't be very practical since I have a cat, and someone with more experience with birds will definitely treat it better than I would - I just feel worried for it and a little attached to it since I took care of it all day orz
It's very cute and also probably the most stupid animal I've ever met in my entire life. I also felt so stressed about it that I barely slept or ate.
So that was the pigeon incident! Here's hoping we've filled the pigeon-related-incident quota for a couple of years, but I'll let you know if we're back with another one in six months from now.
Been a lot of things on my end - had something of a family emergency, got sick for a few days (not covid, I think), finally had a chance to play DnD again after a few months, got Pokémon Shining Pearl and Legends Arceus (secondhand, since we're over giving Nintendo more money for their crunched, unfinished Pokémon games lol), but probably the most bizarre and stressful occurrence of the last few weeks was this week's pigeon incident.
Thursday afternoon/early evening, I was out for a long walk with my housemate astraldreams , and on our way home, we ran into a pigeon. Now, this is a pretty common occurrence - I live in a city, and there are many pigeons to run into, but this one seemed sort of lost. It was sitting on the corner of a doorstep, huddled up, and either didn't feel threatened by our presence... or was just really, really slow. My litmus test to determine if a pigeon is fine on its own is that a healthy pigeon won't let you pick it up, and will be gone before you could even hope to grab it, but it turns out that if that test fails, you're holding a pigeon in your hands.
A bit of context for people less familiar with pigeons (as I've found out - a lot of people I talked to over the last couple days seemed bewildered by my decision to yoink a pigeon off the street): the common pigeon isn't a truly wild animal. They're domesticated, and the pigeons you see outside aren't wild, but feral (normally). Because pigeons are a domesticated species, they're well-adapted to living with humans, and don't really have any natural defenses of their own. Although you probably won't be able to catch and keep a feral pigeon (they're pretty quick), a few generations of being feral hasn't changed the birds significantly, or back into a wild type. This means that pretty much the only differences between a street pigeon and a fancy pigeon (the domestic kind kept by bird keepers), are appearance (fancy pigeons are often bred for their looks), and whether they were socialized by people. They're much more like chickens than they are like, say, jackdaws or robins.
{Spoiler}
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All that aside, I figured the pigeon I found must have been a pet pigeon, judging by the way it responded to being handled. Pigeons have poor vision in the dark which makes it difficult for them to fly at night, and my friend suggested it might have been fawning when it easily let me handle it, but either way, it didn't respond as a feral pigeon would. So I took it home with me... and then just kind of had a pigeon in my house?
Originally, I was going to take it back where I found it in the morning, with the reasoning that it might have been someone's free-roaming pigeon that just didn't make it home before dark, and got stuck where it was because of its poor dark vision. But then, once I had it in my house, I realized this pigeon is actually a baby.
If you look closely, you can still see its baby feathers stick out of its head, and its coat is unfinished in some places, like the bald area around its beak, and the bald patches under its wings (not pictured). I'm honestly not 100% sure this thing can fly much yet, if at all, lol. I let it free-roam my room, since I don't have anything like a bird cage, but I haven't seen it fly. At night, I made a make-shift nest for it consisting of a crate on its side with a water-proof protective mattress cover inside, and a sweater draped over the top to give it the sense of a safe hideaway. It seemed to take to that well. It also seemed generally comfortable with our presence and being close to us, although not with being physically touched.The next morning, after making sure it ate something (was really worried it couldn't eat seed yet and I'd have to handfeed it peas or something, but thankfully that wasn't the case) we went back to where we found it and tried ringing some doors - it couldn't have been outside for very long, considering it wasn't totally malnourished (or grabbed by a cat before I grabbed it), and I don't think it could have gone far considering it's very young. Nobody opened, so I popped some notes in people's mailboxes asking to contact me if they lost this pigeon. In retrospect, probably a very strange note to receive without the context of it being domestic. When nobody responded to that, either, and there were no reports of missing pigeons on Facebook, I called the local animal rescue services, and they came and picked it up. The lady on the phone did NOT seem convinced I found a domestic pigeon and didn't just like... kidnap a street pigeon - she was asking me to try putting it outside, to see if it'd fly off, and suggested I put it in a box while waiting for the animal rescue service to come pick it up LMAO. Thankfully the people who actually came for it recognized it was a very young fancy pigeon.
The local animal rescue service here works with vets and shelters, so they make sure animals they find are taken care of, and either released back into the wild (if they are wild), or they are sheltered while they search for its owner, until a certain point, after which they are put up for adoption. It would be the best case scenario, but I'm not too sure they'll be able to find its original owner, either... but even if they don't, it will probably be adopted out to someone else, who will take good care of it. It's a very pretty, and well-mannered pigeon.
I'm still very worried about it, and I almost wish I kept it... It wouldn't be very practical since I have a cat, and someone with more experience with birds will definitely treat it better than I would - I just feel worried for it and a little attached to it since I took care of it all day orz
It's very cute and also probably the most stupid animal I've ever met in my entire life. I also felt so stressed about it that I barely slept or ate.So that was the pigeon incident! Here's hoping we've filled the pigeon-related-incident quota for a couple of years, but I'll let you know if we're back with another one in six months from now.
