Stunt Pigeon (ha cha cha cha)

It's all about the racing pigeon today.  It's good to have a bit of content for the Northern readership (although I appreciate that their needs are normally amply catered for by Boy Bedford, whom, I imagine, is an avid pigeon fancier himself)

Right, back to base.  You know those motorcyle stunt display teams (bear with me).  They weave in and out of one another without crashing and being killed to death.  Well I have been rehearsing a similarly spectacular bit of choreography with a retired racing pigeon and a Toyota forklift.

Said pidge entered my life yesterday.  It is wearing a little tag around its leg which suggests that it should really be competing in some sort of race.  Well it ain't.  It's taken up residence in the grading shed at Sycamore Farm instead. 

Cue (or should that be "coo") one disappointed flat-cap and braces wearing Northerner somewhere staring forlornly at an empty wicker basket and an equally empty trophy cabinet.  Maybe said Northerner is staring forlornly at an empty frying pan - I'm not sure how they celebrate second place birds what with soaring food prices.

Basically the bird was a little bit discombobulated when it arrived.  Maybe it was extremely thirsty, maybe it had grown cynical about competitive sport (akin to my own position on the matter), maybe it is faking it's own death like that bogus canoeist.  Never mind all that - it is still here.

Anyway, it works like this.  I drive across the yard on the forklift.  Pidge walks slowly along straight into my path.  I close my eyes and proceed F S ahead.  Pidge emerges from other side seemingly in perfect working order.  I've been counting.  It's been under the forklift 7 times.  It's like when then house fell on Buster Keaton (or Chaplin or Harold Lloyd or whoever) and he was standing where the front door aperture was.  This is high-end silent comedy.  All it needs is a pithy commentary from Harry Hill. 

Each time I imagine I am going to see a pigeon pizza in my rear view mirror but when we regroup old "feathers" is unscathed.

The skill with displays like this is that they are a team effort.  It's like ballroom dancin' - one leads and one follows.  You can't both be in charge of the not crashing.  One person has to carry on as usual.  They are the stooge.  This part is my job.

The other party is the skilled division within the operation.  They are in charge of not being compressed by a solid industrial tyre. This is where the pigeon comes in.  The stunt hinges on my ability to carry on as though nothing is happening.

I had failed, in the past, to see the merits of keeping a pigeon as a pet.  Surely this is like having a nettle as a house plant.  But I now realise that there is something quite touching about the relationship between a man and his pigeon.  We certainly have a special something going on here: we are the Torvill and Dean of the daffodil bulb harvesting world. 

I'm not on the forklift now, someone else has taken over from me.  I fear that they will not understand the relationship as instinctively as I do; the pigeon doesn't speak after all, its performance is essentially a mime-based act. 

There is the obvious danger that they will assume that our feathered friend is a fool.  They will violate the routine and slam on the brakes trying to miss the little fellow.  This, I suspect, is the recipe for pigeon pate.