spill your guts
Pigeons are tough birds. You can say what you want about them - call them dumb or refer to them as "rats with wings" - but you can't say they're not tough. Last night at PW, two girls came by just as we were closing up shop, with a pigeon that had just expired as they got out of their car. They'd found it lying in the street, breathing with its beak open (a sign of distress) and picked it up in a towel and brought it in to us. Upon inspection of the bird, its entire abdominal cavity was split open, with intestines spilling out and half of its organs visible to the naked eye. Yet the bird was alive just a few minutes ago!!! Last year I recall hearing lots of "oohs and ahhs" from the med room and then seeing one of the managers walking out with a pigeon that she was going to euthanize. I asked what was wrong with the bird, at which point she lifted up the wing to expose a rotted-away hole in its chest cavity the size of a quarter!! Yet the bird was sitting there looking around like nothing was going on.
And last week as I was tube-feeding a mourning dove (a fellow member of the order Columbiformes), I noticed some blood on its head. I touched it and the whole scalp seemed to move, so I figured I better show the manager on duty. She looked it over and sure enough, the bird was basically scalped! She was moving it all around and checking the wound, and the bird never batted an eye or even strained to get away. And lest you think that this inactivity was merely because the bird was in shock and just waiting to kick the bucket, I saw the bird again last night and it was doing just fine - albeit with a little bit of a funky-looking hairdo.
And last week as I was tube-feeding a mourning dove (a fellow member of the order Columbiformes), I noticed some blood on its head. I touched it and the whole scalp seemed to move, so I figured I better show the manager on duty. She looked it over and sure enough, the bird was basically scalped! She was moving it all around and checking the wound, and the bird never batted an eye or even strained to get away. And lest you think that this inactivity was merely because the bird was in shock and just waiting to kick the bucket, I saw the bird again last night and it was doing just fine - albeit with a little bit of a funky-looking hairdo.