In
the fall of 1978 I accidentally started
my career as a pigeon fancier. I had to blame it on my youngest son
Jerome. One memorable day he turned up with a couple of ugly young pigeons
which he had got as a present from his playmate’s father. We already possessed
two rabbits joyfully living in a hutch mainly built of wire netting and old timber work.
Deep
below the surface of the earth their accommodation has been separated from the rest of the free
world with chicken-wire. I wasn’t at all pleased when I saw my son with these
pigeons. I was upset and asked: ’What are you going to do with those useless
creatures’
‘Well, they can live with Jim and Wilma’, he
answered with an appealing look.
‘Then
they‘ll have no shelter, you expose them to all sorts of weather’, I protested
‘We
can do with birds, can’t we, they are used to living in the open’, he pleaded.
So he had his way. In a poultry run where you
had to bend at a height of 60 centimetres two breeding cages were attached to
the netting. On the others side of
Jerome’s fantasy building the
pigeons got their front door. There still was a problem left. Dark and Light Jackstone as Jerome had christened
the two innocent pigeons by name were cocks and
sooner or later they would be in
need of female companionship.
Therefore
my dear son bought two hens in a nearby
poultry market. And now the happy animal
family life in his little zoo could
begin.
The Jackstones and theirs beloved
hens embarked on a breeding session and Wilma and Jim deep
and far away in one of their dark burrows welcomed their offspring. In the walking Jerome enlarged his little community with two guinea
pigs.
After Dark Jack and his partner had been breeding for a while my son came home with a huge egg. Which he claimed to have found somewhere in the middle of nowhere. He slipped it in the nest under Jack’s hen. To his surprise She accepted without batting an eyelid the queer thing.
No single
trace of embarrassment. No, Dark Jackstone and his wife did adopt the giant egg without hesitation.
It was their egg and that was that.
Two
weeks after a duckling hatched. It immediately made it loudly squeaking obvious that it had entered
into the big world. Jerome’s pigeon couple regarded that strange
creature in their nest as their young and they tried to feed it in the
pigeon way. However that didn’t work. Young duck leave their nest and are self-supporting by nature.
In
the afternoon our day-old chick jumped or rather tumbled down from the breeding
box and minutes later it strolled around
amongst the rabbits, guinea pigs and other pigeons that didn’t seem to pay any
attention to this busy squeaking new
inhabitant of their rabbit hill. Our
ugly duckling ate everything; pigeon food,
stale bread and even rabbit droppings. So she enjoyed the good life and
after that tasty meal she went for a swim in the pigeons drinking fountain.
Jackstone
still attempted to feed his foster child
in the typical pigeon way. He nervously tripped around unthankful duck.
Towards the end of the day our duckling started to squeak in a complaining voice. It was tired and in need of a warm nest. So Jerome took it back into the breeding box, where it crawled close to its foster pigeon hen and then soon fell asleep.
And from that time onwards that became a regular habit. During daytime the little
duck threw herself from the nest into
the interesting rabbit world and somewhere in the afternoon my son gently
lifted her up to the pigeon nursery.
Occasionally she was allowed to go for as stroll outside the rabbit warren
accompanied by one of us.
As
far as the pigeons concerned; they didn’t seem to notice the difference between an extravagant egg and one of their
own. At first they even regarded that new born chicken their own child.
In
our childhood we looted the nests of magpies. A magpie nest mostly contained
5-7 eggs. When we’d climbed a high tree
and there only were 2 or 3 eggs my schoolboy friend with whom I was on what we called an egg raid replaced these eggs
with small potatoes.
In this way we didn’t disturb the magpies breeding session
and after a couple of days we came back to collect the other eggs which mother
magpie in between had produced. In doing
so maybe we discovered that birds
probably didn’t see the
difference in shape, colour and size.
The teacher at school had told us the interesting story of the Cuckoo
and the songbirds. But he also then
tried to convince us that robbing birds nests was more or less immoral.
No
doubt you wish to know how Jerome’s duck
and pigeon story ended. In the beginning
it was a happy affair. Except from the
guinea pigs who didn’t really socialize, pigeons, rabbits and duck lived
peaceful together. Every now and then the duck went underground and also some
pigeons occasionally dropped by in a
rabbit burrow. Jerome joined as a junior member the local pigeon club, Pro
Patria by name. And on their first races from Belgium to their rabbit loft Light
and Dark Jackstone were amazingly successful.
The
little duck however never became fully fledged; it wasn’t destined to be a
beautiful swan. Maybe she took bad food
or got infected by some horrible pigeon disease. In short one Monday morning it
fell ill and eventually died.
©c.u
zie voor het verhaal in het Nederlands http://duivenpad.blogspot.nl/2011/09/duiven-in-de-konijnenberg.html
zie voor het verhaal in het Nederlands http://duivenpad.blogspot.nl/2011/09/duiven-in-de-konijnenberg.html
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