Sundays are for brunch and helping out a pigeon in need right? Because thats what happened to me this Sunday.
The forth year exam season has ended, so naturally I don’t know what to do with myself and my one week off before beginning rotations. This of course led to a state of wandering around coffee in hand watching the world pass by…or the pigeons if you will.
As a vet student I am being trained to notice abnormalities in any species I come across. So when I found a pigeon that wasn’t walking quite right I decided to watch it a little longer. And thats when I noticed quite a large wad of hair (looked like horse hair) wrapped around his little pigeon legs and toes. It was actively getting tighter as he* (*for the purpose of this article we are going to pretend the pigeon was a he – my bird sexing skills are not great) walked along with the other pigeons in Wolfe Tone Square in Dublin. And having seen his state of distress – I had to try to help.
Thankfully I am prone to snacking and carry at least one spare granola bar with me at all times. So I got down on my hands and knees, in the middle of everyone enjoying their lunch in the sun (I can only imagine many people took snapchat videos of me doing this) and coaxed him over with the granola bar. Couple of attempts later and sheer desperation (I’m on the ground in the middle of town, so I’ve gotta be successful now) I finally caught him.
This is my I’ve actually managed to catch the pigeon but what do I do now face
The hair unfortunately was wrapped much more tightly around his legs than I first thought, and no one around was too happy to help the seemingly crazy vet student and her sick pigeon. So naturally I popped him into my Longchamp (he pooped in there a few times) and brought him home with me (I don’t live very far away) where I was able to get my very able mum (a recently retired A&E nurse) to hold said pigeon as I removed all the hair and gently massaged the blood flow back into his little pigeon legs.
And just to make sure he was a-okay, I kept him for a half an hour to snack on the remaining granola bar, have a little drink and let the feeling come back into his little pigeon feet before sending him on his way. And to quote my mum “do we have to bring him back to his pigeon friends”.
Farewell Mr Pigeon – it was a pleasure helping you.
