The sound of breaking glass

the 77  back home

Collision course

It was somewhere in April last year. I had someone on the phone. While I was listening to the tittle-tattle on the other side of the line with half an ear, I looked outside. 

My pigeons were enjoying themselves at the back of  the garden and on the roof of the garage. They had their first breed. 

Suddenly an  alarming sound was heard; a little boy from the neighbourhood threw a pebble on the roof of the loft. The birds seized by panic flew  away in all possible directions and one of them approached at high speed the windowpane of the living room.

‘Just a minute’, I said to the phone,’ trouble ahead.’ But even before I had put down the receiver, the pigeon   collided against the double window, bounced back, floundered, and was dead within seconds.

I picked up the receiver and told that one of my pigeons  had flown into my window.

‘It must be  broken, I suppose’, was the answer.

‘No course not,’ I said irritated, ‘my pigeon is dead.’ I ended the  annoying conversation, went outside, and picked  up  the  unlucky bird.. It was the ‘Swift’ a late September breed, a cock which Harry, a member of Pro Patria, our Pigeon club had given to me.

I looked at the ring. 800, that was  an easy number to remember. It was a pigeon of promising origin That was again a bit of a blow and as I stood there for  a while meditating, I remembered other events that had to do with breaking glass.

Long ago when I was still a student at a Teacher’s training college  we had one day an educational trip to  a cotton mill. On that occasion one of our beloved teachers walked right through a  thick glass made door. It was great fun. It was Mr Smith, who was always chasing us. 

We had escaped from the Spinning-mill, were walking outside in the sun because we didn’t care much for the cotton and wool business. 

But Mr Smith spotted us and in his eager to arrest  his stray student he didn’t see the glazed door of the modern factory. He splintered up  then there that very door, but he himself was alright, not a scratch.

I laid the unfortunate  blue chequers cock in the shed for the time being. Why did that teacher escape  without a single drip of blood while my pigeon didn’t get the best of it. 

Of course the speed of a bird is far more higher than a fast walking double Dutch teacher. It makes sense. In the  six or seven yards from the loft to my house  my ‘Swift’ must have had a speed of let’s say  about forty miles. 

My pigeon was small and the window was strong, moreover a  fat  hunting teacher has got the weight on his side, though he may not walk faster  than a mile or three.

The second incident concerned a blue pencil cock that stayed behind  from Corbeil in France in 1980 on the last day of May. The  homing pigeons had  to face  bad weather conditions. A rain belt covered Northern France and

Belgium that day. In the opinion of the members of our club Corbeil had always been a heavy race, because that town was built in a valley. Anyhow the 77, my blue pencil, didn’t show up.

A couple of days  went by  without a sign of my missing favourite. Then one evening the telephone rang.

‘I have  got a blue speckled  pigeon,’ It was a British pigeon keeper  living  somewhere in the neighbourhood of Hull. He had my pigeon! It was quite worn out and had to recover, he meant.

I asked him if he would like to keep  the bird. But that was out of the question. 

He was convinced that my 77 would return to Holland under its own steam, once it was in good shape again. Meanwhile I thanked my  fellow pigeon keeper for taking care of the lost sheep.

So my blue pencil hero was on the other side of the North Sea somewhere north west of Hull and instead of the 200 miles from Corbeil to Amersfoort it had covered a double distance.

What on earth was my pigeon doing in England.  That  very year  he was mated to  an English hen that had preferred my loft to her British pigeon house. Had he come to like the English pigeon ladies that much, that he had  voluntarily crossed the Channel to see if there was anything more he fancied. Or had she sent him that way in order to settle family affairs! Who can tell?

Of course  the pigeons had tried to avoid the heavy showers that last day of May and in doing so they had come above  the sea That’s the way it must have been.

 For weeks together nothing happened. Probably I was not  ever to see my English pigeon again. I was wrong! 

my first loft

On the 21^e  of July the  strong wind was blowing from the west and at the end of the day my 77 was home again. I was deeply impressed.

I immediately sent a letter and within a week got an answer The English pigeon host told  that his little daughter in particular had  been looking after the Dutch visitor and she was very pleased that it had travelled all the way back to Holland. 

The 77  had made several efforts tot cross the sea, had been away from the loft sometimes all day long, returning home after sunset with seaweed on its legs

In spring a year later my pigeons were playing around the house, when they were startled by some noise and they rushed from the roof. A moment after that my neighbour’s daughter brought the 77 She had found him in their garden near the sliding window. 

Maybe I could cure it, she said. It had only passed out and  would  soon recover, she   thought. She wasn’t right of course and I told her so.

Collision course; a road that inevitably leads to an accident   

Poor 77 running so many risks in flying home from unknown countries, crossing  seemingly an endless seas only to meet with a fatal accident so near his loft.

Cor Uitham      

      
in het volgende blog komt de nederlandse versie