I love my little cat, Mishka, but he does have some rather disconcerting habits, not least of which is his love for chasing and sometimes catching mice and birds. He doesn’t catch many birds, mostly mice and shrews, but occasionally I think he finds, rather than catches, baby birds that may have fallen out of their nests. He always brings me these trophies, either dead or half alive and leaves them under the table on the lawn for me to find.
Being of the Buddhist persuasion as regards living things, I am not very happy about this and always try to save the mice if I can. Some of them manage to scurry away, but I don’t know if they always survive.
So, when, one day in summer, I found two little balls of fluff lying under the table I was not only astonished but also appalled. When he had found these two baby birds or how he had carried them here I could not fathom, for they were quite large for chicks and at first I did not know what kind of birds they were. They had a lot of downy feathers, large black feet and long black beaks.
Pecky Ink pen and brush. Carole Day
One was already dead, but the other seemed ok except for a small bite mark on his side, so I took him aside and made a nest for him in a plastic tub with soft foamy padding. I put him in the summer house, where cats and foxes couldn’t get him. I gave him a dish of water and some mealworms and tried to feed him, without much success. I also found some small worms under flowerpots and put those in with him as well. Whenever I tried to feed him or give him water he just wanted to peck me instead; it didn’t hurt, just gentle pecks, he was a feisty little bird. So I named him Pecky. If it had not been during the pandemic lockdown I would have taken him to the Vet or Animal Hospital, but it was difficult at the time.
He survived the night and the next morning. I tried again to feed him and give him water, but he didn’t seem to want to eat. Instead he kept trying to stand on his little wings and pushed his head through my fingers.
It seems strange to suggest that in barely a day it is possible to become attached to a fellow creature, and yet I can truthfully say that I came to love that little bird, and although I did not expect him to survive I really wished he would. He survived that day but by the next morning he was dead. I decided to bury him in the garden. I dug a hole, put him in and covered the grave with some lovely chalk stones that I had gathered from the beach at Ramsgate for one of my sculpture projects.
I told my sister, Gill, all about it and my plans to buy a sculpture to mark his grave. She looked him up from my description and found that he was a baby pigeon, or Squab, and also found a lovely Pigeon birdbath, which I ordered the same day. I had taken a photograph of Pecky before he died and he was indeed a Squab, this made sense as there are many Wood Pigeons living around the garden.
The next day when I went to check Pecky’s grave I was horrified to find that the stones had been moved and his body was gone. Stupidly I had not buried him in a box, or deep enough. I was very upset, but on reflection I realised that the bodies of our loved ones all perish in one way or another and it is the our memory of them that is most important. I positioned the pigeon birdbath with pots of fuchsias behind where I could see it from the patio table, where I often sit in the summer.
Where the grave was I buried the photograph of Pecky and some seeds and mealworms for the journey. Just like my sweet dog and cats I will never forget him, but hold him safe in my heart.
