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Death Comes to the House
Jun. 22nd, 2020 11:49 amThere has been a woodpigeon nesting under one of my office windows. I think she was alarmed the first time I opened the window and said hello, but that didn't put her off continuing to build the nest and eventually laying her eggs and hatching them. There were two squabs (though I think a much better name is pidgelets) and as I had never seen a baby woodpigeon before they were a continual source of fascination. First they appeared under mum, then they got too big for all three to be in the nest all the time, but she would come back and feed them, and sometimes dad turned up in the morning to coo at them. Happy Families springtime hurrah.
On Saturday I checked in and saw one of the two was breathing heavily and bothered by flies. Not long for this world, I thought, but the other was fine and the flies weren't bothering him. Sunday I was doing some watering, and as the spigot is right under the nest I had a poke around to see if the unfortunate pidgelet had been discarded from the nest, but no sign. It couldn't have recovered, could it?
This morning I am back at my desk so I checked out the window, and found both pidgelets dead. This was not an ideal start to the day. It is the way of the world, and if all woodpigeons made it to adulthood we'd be drowning in them, but they were a delight of the workspace and I was looking forward to seeing them – or at least one of them – fledge. I don't know what went wrong; the one was obviously sick, but was it something it ate? Did mum stop feeding them? (I haven't heard her at the nest for a few days.) Were they weakened by the cold wet spell we've just had? They were more mature than I'd expect for a fatality from just failing to thrive. They were both thriving, and then suddenly were not.
On the other side of the house is The Worst Pigeon Nest Ever, a bare assembly of twigs heaped casually on top of some climbing roses. Someone laid an egg in it and scarpered. Having bloomed and finished, the roses are now trying to eat the house, and as the nest was clearly abandoned I went out there this morning and started cutting back the worst of them with the long pole pruning shears. As I was contemplating animal infanticide and the circle of life, a hearse slowly rolled past on its way to the church, followed by a ragtag procession on foot. Some were nursing cans of lager, some in uncomfortable shoes; a couple of eyes were wiped but it was mostly formal. I hadn't heard if funerals were allowed again but they didn't seem to mind. Not that The Virus seems to be much on the minds of people here generally – if the person in the hearse had died of it, that did not inspire much social distancing amongst their followers. Maybe living out in the countryside makes you more accepting of death as a part of life. Maybe they found the comforting presence of friends and family more valuable. Maybe they just don't care. I didn't ask.
This house has been through at least two plagues, as well as the 1918 flu and the current crisis. I am living here because its previous occupants died. I sleep in their bed and eat off their crockery so every day is a reminder they left the house that way. They are not the first to have done so. In it, I am drawing people who all died before I was born. There is a curious blind spot for death in modern Anglophone culture: it's as if those who survived WWII were so tired of it they didn't want to think about it, so didn't tell subsequent generations about it, and thus it comes as a surprise, like a Victorian bride's wedding night. We've got much better about sex, but made death taboo instead, leaving people grasping when it elbows its way into their life. This needs to change. Hopefully that will be one of many positive effects of this crisis.
And I, at some point, will need to knock down the nest with the two pidgelets, because the parents are too busy making new woodpigeons to do it themselves ...
On Saturday I checked in and saw one of the two was breathing heavily and bothered by flies. Not long for this world, I thought, but the other was fine and the flies weren't bothering him. Sunday I was doing some watering, and as the spigot is right under the nest I had a poke around to see if the unfortunate pidgelet had been discarded from the nest, but no sign. It couldn't have recovered, could it?
This morning I am back at my desk so I checked out the window, and found both pidgelets dead. This was not an ideal start to the day. It is the way of the world, and if all woodpigeons made it to adulthood we'd be drowning in them, but they were a delight of the workspace and I was looking forward to seeing them – or at least one of them – fledge. I don't know what went wrong; the one was obviously sick, but was it something it ate? Did mum stop feeding them? (I haven't heard her at the nest for a few days.) Were they weakened by the cold wet spell we've just had? They were more mature than I'd expect for a fatality from just failing to thrive. They were both thriving, and then suddenly were not.
On the other side of the house is The Worst Pigeon Nest Ever, a bare assembly of twigs heaped casually on top of some climbing roses. Someone laid an egg in it and scarpered. Having bloomed and finished, the roses are now trying to eat the house, and as the nest was clearly abandoned I went out there this morning and started cutting back the worst of them with the long pole pruning shears. As I was contemplating animal infanticide and the circle of life, a hearse slowly rolled past on its way to the church, followed by a ragtag procession on foot. Some were nursing cans of lager, some in uncomfortable shoes; a couple of eyes were wiped but it was mostly formal. I hadn't heard if funerals were allowed again but they didn't seem to mind. Not that The Virus seems to be much on the minds of people here generally – if the person in the hearse had died of it, that did not inspire much social distancing amongst their followers. Maybe living out in the countryside makes you more accepting of death as a part of life. Maybe they found the comforting presence of friends and family more valuable. Maybe they just don't care. I didn't ask.
This house has been through at least two plagues, as well as the 1918 flu and the current crisis. I am living here because its previous occupants died. I sleep in their bed and eat off their crockery so every day is a reminder they left the house that way. They are not the first to have done so. In it, I am drawing people who all died before I was born. There is a curious blind spot for death in modern Anglophone culture: it's as if those who survived WWII were so tired of it they didn't want to think about it, so didn't tell subsequent generations about it, and thus it comes as a surprise, like a Victorian bride's wedding night. We've got much better about sex, but made death taboo instead, leaving people grasping when it elbows its way into their life. This needs to change. Hopefully that will be one of many positive effects of this crisis.
And I, at some point, will need to knock down the nest with the two pidgelets, because the parents are too busy making new woodpigeons to do it themselves ...
