Week in review & pigeon rescue!
Why am I doing these on a Saturday? I should probably change that.
Seeing as how I write these on a Saturday I'm going to include last Sunday in "the week". So this starts with a big ol' drive to the nearest city because last Sunday was Polish voting day. Even though we live in the UK my wife still has the right to vote in Polish elections, and did so because the present Polish government are, to put it kindly, a bunch of nationalistic, homophobic, transphobic, sexist pricks. Now, in this election they still managed to win the most seats but they don't have enough to form a government and nobody will ally with them for a coalition so it looks like they are going to get kicked out! This is wonderful news.
Work has been fine too. Actually pretty slow, which is weird. This week introduced me to react.js for the first time which I was a little afraid of, but it went really well and work we thought would take an entire week at least ended up taking two days. The rest of the week I was really struggling to find things to even do, the dev supporting my on-boarding knew but was busy himself so yeah. That was a little frustrating because I'd actually prefer to stay busy with work than watch the clock drag itself around. On Friday I was given a new task and it took me all of two hours to complete, so going into next week I'm still waiting on work.
Storm Babet has hit the UK and that brought with it floods in my town. I kid you not when I drove home from work one day this week what is usually the last 60 seconds of my drive, and that's no exaggeration, it is literally the last minute, actually took about forty minutes because of... a burst pipe? river flooded its banks? Not sure. But it closed one of two ways into the area I live and the whole town was gridlocked because of it. God I miss being fully remote.
And I end this review on something I have never written before, and perhaps never will again. A pigeon rescue.
When we first moved into this house we noticed a big pigeon-shaped imprint on our back bedroom window, thought "oh", and then nothing ever happened so we forgot about it. Fast-forward to last week the window was hit by a pigeon at least three more times. One very unfortunate pigeon or three? We do not know. What we do know is that on Wednesday whilst working I heard a *THUD* and went to investigate. New pigeon-imprint. I look out the window and see a pigeon sitting on the grass. I figure it's probably just dazed and gave it a couple hours to sort itself out, and when I went to check again it had gone so I thought it flew off.
The next day (the same day of the floods) when I eventually got home I used the back door to take some rubbish out to the bins when I realised the pigeon had not gone, it had just moved itself right up against the house which meant I couldn't see it from the window. Nobody used the back door on Wednesday or Thursday morning/afternoon so it wasn't until the evening we discovered it. We started looking up what to do and figured our best bet was to call the RSPCA, which is a charity organisation in the UK that helps all sorts of different animals (pets and wild) but it was late at night and their phone line was closed. We put some bird food next to the pigeon and felt very bad we couldn't do more. Avian flu is still pretty prevalent in the UK so the RSPCA strongly discourage trying to help birds yourself, the risk is too great. Unfortunately the storm was also getting worse so it was impossible to put up a makeshift cover because it would just blow away. The little guy did shuffle himself under a garden bench for some protection from the elements.
The next morning I am pleased to say the lil' fella was still alive so we called the RSPCA first thing and only three hours later a volunteer rocked up to rescue him. Although he looked like a fully adult pigeon to me she said he was still young and probably learning to fly when the accident happened. His left leg was really swollen and probably broken which was preventing him from walking or flying away. She took him to a vet where they can sort the leg out and he should make a full recovery. Get well soon!
We're going to try to figure out a way of making our window look less appealing to pigeons. Either find a way of reducing the reflection of the trees or stick a big hawk silhouette on there to deter them.
But really I think it's incredible that the RSPCA not only cares about some random pigeon, but was able to turn up in three hours to save him. She travelled quite a distance too, at least an hour's drive to get here. If you have any spare cash please do consider donating to them because they are animal heroes.
~ Honey