I hope you've all had a great Thursday (it's nearly Friday and it's a bank holiday on Monday so no complaints from me) Thursday's here on A Series of Unfortunate Irritations means weird/interesting fact/story day and this week I'm going to tell you a funny story....followed my some interesting facts about the subject of the story.
So Bundy, what's the story?! Well everyone settle down while I tell you the tale of...
The Pigeon that flew into the Window
Firstly, some context; picture a quiet office on a Wednesday afternoon, clouds roam the sky ominously having already rained once earlier that day. My office is on the first floor of a council building and I work by the row of windows on the right hand side of the office.
Now for the juicy bit. So I've just come back from lunch, it's about one o'clock so it was still lunch hour for many others in the office. Some NHS big-wigs are just finishing their walkabout of our IT department- they like to do this every now and again to be seen to be 'with the people'. Anyway, I had just put my earphones in and was about to get back into my work when I (and everyone) was disturbed by a huge THUD!! coming from the window. Everyone looks up. I rip my earphones from my ears. I look up sharply to see a somewhat bewildered looking pigeon fly off in the opposite direction. What had happened, it transpired, was that a pigeon had flown straight at the window probably not even paying attention to it's surroundings, bounced off and flew away with the sting of humiliation.
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| picture:WondersList. I wonder if this was taken the same day? I does have a look of 'oops! I just fell into a window' about it |
While everyone was still gawping in disbelief, I noticed that the pigeon had unwittingly left a mark on the glass. An outline of where it had landed abruptly spread-eagle on the window pane. I was just amazed. How on earth did it not notice the glass? Had it never flown by buildings before?! I always thought that despite their absent unforgiving looks that they were reasonably clever. Streetwise even. I mean you always see them commandeering the seating areas outside fast food establishments like McD's and Greggs, pacing the floor like some kind of winged mafia and giving you the beady eye as you tuck into your lunch. Not to mention the stoic, almost heroic sense of determination just to carry on going whether it be with several funky looking toes or a stumpy leg. They keep on hopping along despite life's many struggles. Just take this absent minded pigeon as an example; it flew straight into our window at quite a speed if the sound of the thud was anything to go by, turned itself around mid-air and no doubt survived the ordeal without so much as a scratch! Then after that it probably flew itself home picking up a discarded sausage roll on the way and slept soundly with it's pigeon family.
Of course I could be wrong, it could've ended up collapsing shortly afterwards having sustained severe concussion. But I don't like to think of that version. Shortly after the event, when everyone had got back to their work, I started to replay the whole thing in my head again. This is where the giggles started. The giggles then turned into hysterical laughter and eventually had me in tears as I pictured the look of pure horror and humiliation on the pigeon's face as it met the window with that loud THUD. I imagined if he was dared by his pigeon friends to see who could get the closest to the window without touching it. I then imagined his pigeon friends cooing hysterically as their pigeon friend had got a little to close for comfort. I like to give animals and inanimate objects an elaborate back story. It makes things more interesting.
Once I had finished laughing, I started to tell others about this amazingly weird hilarious event. I emailed colleagues. I even text Matthew who works 30 miles away. I made pigeon puns for the rest of the day and when I got home I even told my mum about it too. It was, and still is, the highlight of my working week. It's not everyday you get a pigeon fly directly into your window leaving their mark like a crime scene outline. Well I suppose it was a crime scene because it definitely murdered my composure and concentration for the rest of the day.
Now with that story, I thought it would be prudent for me to enlighten you with some pigeon facts:
- Pigeons as a species date waaaaaay back in history as far as 3000 BC. Before convenience food? Of course not.
- There is the tale of Cher Ami (meaning dear friend) who was a messenger pigeon in the First World War. Amazingly, this pigeon was shot in the chest and leg whilst carrying messages that saved many French lives and even lost most of the message leg as a result. Despite all of this and with the message still attached, Cher Ami carried on through the battle field for another 25 miles to eventually get the message home. Needless to say he was rewarded for his heroic efforts. Now try and tell me pigeons aren't clever.
- As they have monocular vision instead of binocular vision like us, pigeons in fact need to bob their heads for depth perception! So no, they're not doing that on purpose to look like the bird equivalent of Danny Dyer.
- The world's biggest news agency Reuters in fact started their European business by using trained homing pigeons. They used a flock of 45 pigeons to carry news about from Germany to the residents of Belgium. They made the 76 mile journey in a record 2 hours!
See, pigeons despite their looks may be more switched on than you think. Well apart from the odd blip of course......
I hope you enjoyed this post. Feel free to comment and share if you did. As for tomorrow I am not sure if I will get the time to blog as I am going straight from work tomorrow to visit Matthew for the bank holiday weekend and won't be back until Monday evening. However, I will try to get back and blog again on Monday evening to update you on the weekend's events. I hope you all have a great weekend! Don't do anything I wouldn't do.
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