The sudden death of a pigeon

Jeroen

I was sitting on the couch in my living room, when there was a sudden flutter of wings outside, a loud doing sound from the upstairs window, a cloud of grey and white feathers and a bird collapsing to the Earth. It twitched a few times and lay still. It was a pigeon. My mother and I approached it with a cardboard box after a few minutes, wearing latex gloves. The body was limp and surprisingly warm to the touch…

It’s a silly thing for a grown pigeon to fly into a window at full tilt and break its neck, but it happens occasionally around here. Last time it was a sparrow. But it always makes me serious-minded and rather sad, when any harmless animal loses it’s life due to an accident. A polar bear lives as a predator and deserves less pity, but say a deer or a monkey I feel sad about. So too a pigeon.

It’s a reminder that death is never far away. Our bodies are fragile, the causes of death are many, and death is inevitable…