The tale of Open Heart Surgery

OHS is a very fat woodpigeon. Last year, he was nearly a late woodpigeon. I was hard at work at my computer upstairs when I heard thumping sounds from down below. I knew my partner was out so, fearing burglars, I crept downstairs to be confronted by a living room full of blood and feathers. A bloodstained cat was staring at me, while a blood-dripping pigeon was perched on the back of the sofa, watching morning telly. The thumps were the sounds of said pigeon having been dragged through the catflap in the jaws of Flad the Impaler (Flad, short for Flathead, the cat's congenital deformity that probably accounts for its lack of brainpower).

The first thing I did was shoo the cat into the kitchen and close the doors. I didn't know which of the two creatures was more injured. I thought Flad might have been gored by the pigeon's beak. As it turned out, it was pigeon blood that stained his white chest.

The poor pigeon was in a bad way. Its chest was ripped open and I didn't think it would survive. I crept quietly out, to give it some calm moments, and rang my partner, who laughed uproariously when I told him to drop the kitchen-fitting work he was doing and come home immediately because the place was like a slaughterhouse and there was a dismembered pigeon watching To Buy or Not to Buy.

He threw a towel over the pigeon and gently carried it out, releasing it at the bottom of the garden while I shouted at the cat. I swept up the feathers, he mopped up the blood and we laid bets on the pigeon's survival.

Well, survive it did, complete with a scar down its chest that looked as if it had had a heart transplant, hence its name, Open Heart Surgery. Perhaps it, like the cat, had sustained brain damage because it became ridiculously tame, hopping up onto the deck even Flad was lying there dozing. OHS has now become King of the Garden, top pigeon, apart from a few weeks when a younger, sleeker one with an oddly curved beak and a ruddy chest bossed OHS around. The usurper has now been seen off and OHS and his docile mate are around every day, OHS getting fatter all the time. He waddles now. I fear he will soon get so obese that he will be unable to fly. Then it will be time for pigeon pie and I may even give Flad a tasty reminder. No, not really. OHS is too special to cook. When his time comes and he plummets from his perch in the oak tree like a feathered football, he will get a burial at the bottom of the garden, next to Flad's last victim, the thrush. I shall play The Last (Pigeon) Post on my old school recorder and place him in the earth to the tune of Mouldy Old Dough by Lieutenant Pigeon, of course.