Percy the Pigeon

On Sunday evening I managed to struggle out of bed and masochistically stumbled downstairs just for a change of scenery, this after my bout of food poisoning the day previously. Bored and still feeling like death warmed up, I happened to look out of the kitchen window in to our back garden where I spotted a racing pigeon just sitting there looking very sad and tired, (a bit like me really!) I should explain that we sometimes get racing pigeons stopping over in the garden and normally they take a rest then fly on presumably to their destination. This pigeon however did look very tired and I said to my wife that I wouldn’t be surprised if didn’t fly off for a while.

Anyway the following day I again saw him still in our back garden and he had hardly moved so I gave him some birdseed and water, which he gamely proceeded to gobble and slurp up as quickly as pigeonly possible.
Monday evening he was still in the garden and so after checking his ring numbers I decided to contact the Pigeon club of Great Britain which happens to be quite local in Cheltenham. They then gave me the owner’s details and I was soon in touch with the chap who lived in Gloucester. He came and collected Percy as I named him, later in the day.

I didn’t know much about the world of pigeon racing and I’m still slightly puzzled what the fascination is. But this chap who came to collect Percy was a very keen owner and you could see the look of delight on his face when he was reunited with his prized pigeon. Evidently Percy was a very young pigeon and consequently inexperienced and this was the most likely explanation for him going off course. Training is a very slow process and it can take years to perfect a prized long distance bird. Percy had flown from Chatham in Kent which evidently wasn’t too far for a young bird and considering he’d landed only six or seven miles from his home hadn’t done too badly.

So there a bit of a happy ending to what otherwise was quite a disastrous weekend for me and if ever Percy is flying around over the Cotswolds he always knows he can pop in for a bit of feed and water. (Sounds like prison food, yuck!)