I was driving on the freeway yesterday and watched as a couple of pigeons misjudged their path across the busy roadway and got caught up in the draft of an eighteen wheeler. I was far enough back to see that the lead pigeon was able to adjust and made it while the other was not as fortunate. I watched a puff of feathers and the bird arched lifelessly to the pavement. It only took a moment and my eye went back to the lead pigeon. Did I imagine that it had gone back to check on the other bird? I had the sickening feeling, if only for that moment, that maybe they were a pair and that now the one would be alone without its mate.
It’s a human trait we assign to other species that causes us grief when maybe there is none. I know that the scriptures teach that God knows each sparrow’s falling, and somehow the passing of a dumb pigeon, something that I had to witness, makes the loss more personal even if there was no “relationship” as we know it, between the two birds. I felt the other pigeon’s loneliness vicariously as it flew back across the freeway, back to where it had started only moments earlier.
In seconds I was down the road and continued on to my next locksmith job. I wonder how long the mourning period is for pigeons, or for humans who have witnessed such an event. I’m not saying that I felt bad ever since, just that in my quiet times since then I wondered how to put that “moment’s” feeling into words.
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