Close call

And it would have been all my fault, due to negligence.

I had been in the office. The dove had been out of its cage since yesterday afternoon, sitting on my closet door staring down at me. Today, though, he looked interested in his black sunflower seeds that I had placed in his food dish with the cage door propped open., to lure him back into his cage.

The cat was in the backyard but he wanted in so I let him in, not realizing that the office door was open. I stepped into the garden, then back inside to shred some papers. I couldn't have been gone for long when I returned to the office to see Pache on the floor with dove feathers in its mouth. The dove was nowhere, and I screamed bloody murder. My legs felt faint and I felt sick and had to leave to calm down, but returned to the murder scene to fess up and locate the dove's lifeless body.

This was not how I imagined it to end. I had even been looking at the dove's grown-in feathers, how even they now looked across his chest except for that repeated wing injury at the bend of his right wing that seems to reopen every few days.

I grabbed Pache and put him in the garage until the murderscene was cleaned up.

But when I returned to the office I realized there was no blood anywhere. The feathers that were on the ground were feathers that the dove had lost over the last few days--stress perhaps--and not new ones. Had the cat attacked the bird there would have been much more feathers.

So I figured he was hiding behind a box and would come out on his own when he felt safe.

An hour later he did waddle out, but quickly flew up and then out of the office. The back porch was open. This was his first flight outside the office.

He had chosen his own flight to freedom. He had had enough of the cat.

But again I was wrong. He was perched up on my Schrank in a corner looking down on me. When I tried to get him down from there, he flew straight toward the porch window, now closed, and hit himself against the glass. Twice. Poor guy was now on the floor and I was able to scoop him up. After gently talking to him, and briefly taking him outside to show him his soon-to-receive freedom, I placed him back in the cage.

I've decided he is ready to fly away now. The life in a dark office is not the life for him. He needs to be in the sun with birds like him. I'll let his wound heal before I let him go, and I'll miss the little guy. I've gotten rather fond of him although he remains aloof toward me.