An Obituary to a Feathered Friend
By Features Editor Chloe Barrett
On October 3 at 10 am, we did not wear pink, we wore black mourning clothes. In the Creative Writing Master’s, we settled into our lecture, itching to discuss Michael McCormack’s Notes From A Coma. However, our illusion of calmness would soon be violently shattered, as our classmate, Erin, flew into the room. Within her tight grasp was a cardboard box, filled with none other than a pigeon.
When I asked Erin what was going through her mind in those precise moments, she said “Becca and I were on our way to class when I saw the pigeon. There was no blood, but the angle of his neck made me assume he was dead—we both approached and I realized he was breathing.
I ought to put it out of its misery, I thought. Becca [another classmate] said, ‘Poor thing, I wonder if we should help it.’ ‘Oh, yes. Right. Maybe we should.’
“Becca and I got to class and I decided that, if I wasn’t going to off the bird, then I needed to research best protocol for delivering the pigeon to animal control. After a quick Google search, I rummaged through the recycle bin for a box, gathered him up, and set him in said box outside of the building. I’d take him to the vet after class. I washed my hands, came back to class, and asked Danny [Denton, our lecturer], ‘Would you like the injured pigeon in the class or outside?’”
Becca adds, “When I first saw him I thought he was a ball of feathers, as if he was already dead and had been eaten by an animal or something. But then when Erin and I looked closer we saw him move and I went ‘oh god, he’s alive. What do we do?!’
“As for general thoughts: you never really expect to be confronted with matters of life and death on your way to class in the morning. I think the whole situation forced me to be cognizant of the frailty and fragility of this tenuous state that we call ‘being alive and existing in the world,’ something that I feel like I spend a lot of time avoiding thinking about in order to stay sane. It was a very existential start to my Tuesday morning.”
Danny wasted no precious time before rushing out of the class in pursuit of a bigger box for our newfound feathered friend. When I asked him if an incident on similar levels of strangeness occurred in any of his classes before, he answered “‘Strangeness’ is an interesting word choice. Nothing like this has happened in a classroom I’ve been in before, but we have two cats, one of whom regularly maims birds and brings them home to us as rewards. So an injured bird being brought into the room didn’t feel strange at all on that level.”
By his return, we had carved out a space in the room for the bird, with a discarded lab coat to cover him. We English students did not hesitate to throw the coat over the new box, making the fowl as comfortable as possible. A few minutes later, after some attempts to feed him pieces of granola breakfast bars, Erin intent on saving this creature’s little life, was planning on cycling to nearest vet immediately. However, balancing the box on her bicycle handles while steering through the city did not seem like the most ideal method of transportation, and would take an abundant length of time, which we did not have. I volunteered, as the owner of a vehicle, to act as ambulance.
I wanted to know what Danny’s thought process was regarding the pigeon’s health, so I queried him if he predicted that the bird ultimately would not survive. He wrote: “I didn’t make a prediction. Anything is possible.”
We trotted at a brisk pace to my car, not without garnering a few confused looks. With Erin as my esteemed passenger with a cardboard box sat on her lap, off we went. Throughout the drive, as I intently followed my Google Maps, feeling like I was in a Fast and Furious movie, the pigeon began to move, battering at the box in a desperate attempt to be free. We felt that this was a great sign, he was fighting to stay alive! Erin explains “On the drive, Chloe told me a story of a pigeon that her and her mom saved after it had broken its wing. They were surprised when the pigeon made a full recovery, but it was flying within the week. Prior to this, I really believed the pigeon was a lost cause. We hit a bump and the pigeon began to move, and I thought, by god, this pigeon has a chance. It might be hyperbolic, but I believe both Chloe and I inflated with hope. Maybe this pigeon would be like the last.”
Upon arriving at the vet, walking like women on a serious mission, we handed our quarry over to a receptionist. After he was escorted into a room on his own, we finally felt like we could breathe. That was, until a vet came out, and we got the dreaded news. Our jaws went slack and only a smattering of “oh, aww,” could be communicated. We sullenly dragged our feet back to the car, gazing fondly at the now feces-stained lab coat, the only sign that he had been with us. I can hear your hearts breaking because ours were shattered too. Looking back, Erin notes that “The dichotomy of Chloe’s experience with the compassionate vet at 14 and ours as adults was stark; the vet tech shooting us straight.” Her final addition to this morose moment: “‘I really should have killed the bird earlier,’ I thought and said. Chloe reassured me, ‘We gave him the best chance he had.’ I nodded. I wouldn’t feel the remorse of it all until that evening when I texted her: It finally hit me, I’m finally sad about the pigeon. […] Hope is a fragile thing, euthanized humanely at the veterinarian’s office.”
Arriving back to our class, after an hour of turmoil, we sulkily took our seats and met the gaze of the hopeful students gazing at us in anticipation. They deflated when the verdict was announced; it was a historic and sad day for us all. Claire Watson, our Editor in Chief, who was also present during the class, stared solemnly into the forlorn future and said “dead pigeons… they [look] like bowling pins.”
To wrap up my short interrogation of Danny Denton in regards to the whole ordeal, I asked him if he could describe his general thoughts about the scenario, both from when it happened to a week later, as I am writing this piece. His beautiful reply eulogises his dearly departed cat, Yuki:
“In answering your first question I wrote that ‘we have’ two cats, but in actual fact we only now have one cat. About four weeks ago, on a Sunday morning, one of our cats – Yuki – had a heart attack trotting across our neighbours’ garden. At least that’s what we (and the vet) think happened. He was six years old and an absolute prince of a cat. He was also a stone cold killer – the one who brought home dead/half-alive/half-dead birds on a regular basis. He once killed five magpie hatchlings in more or less one go, and left them around the outside (thank god) of our house as presents for us. The adult magpies harried and harassed him for a full week afterwards, from the moment he went out the cat flap (they waited for him, each day that week) til the moment he returned. They hated him with every feather on their bodies. He didn’t care. Anyway, Keanu Reeves said that when we die, the ones who loved us miss us, and since Yuki died we feel we’ve met re-incarnated versions or glimpses of him a couple of times. Two days after he died an email went around UCC staff with a picture of a found kitten – someone wondering whether the kitten was owned or recognised by anyone. This kitten was more or less Yuki’s double. [...] Then, when Erin walked into the classroom with an injured bird, I thought that somehow Yuki was still providing for us. We miss the ones we love when they’re gone, but they also return to us in funny, marvellous ways. These were my general thoughts when it happened. I don’t have any new thoughts about it now.”
If you are feeling at all emotional while reading the Express’ first obituary, please take comfort in the following words. Claire asked Denton “How can we move forward from this tragedy?”, and he responded wisely “One day at a time.”
‘Ruby’, also known as the Campus Cat, was conveniently not around for questioning during this period of time.
