Yesterday evening, we were about halfway through an episode of the very first season of The Traitors (we have our fingers on the pulse of current television trends!) when Pugsley introduced his voice to the soundtrack – from the garden. Ignoring Pugsley when he’s woofing at something in the garden is not a thing we do. The last time he woofed (at night) from the garden, he was telling the entire village he’d found a frog. Bless.
So I put The Traitors on pause and went out to see what the problem was. I couldn’t see/find a thing, returned to the house, unpaused (is that a word?) iPlayer and flipping hell he was at it again. I picked up an LED torch and carefully inspected the Brambles Of Doom (for that was where he was woofing). I carefully peeled the BOD back and saw feathers. Aha! I legged it into the house and retrieved my thick gardening gloves, legged it back to the BOD and while TGLWHID held the torch, I carefully retrieved the pigeon which was blinking up at me from the middle of the BOD.
Unfortunately, the pigeon had a gaping wound to its breast, a dodgy wing, and was missing a foot; the pigeon had obviously tangled with something (unlikely it was Pugsley though, he would have finished it in one mouthful). So I walked down beneath the apple tree to the field beyond the garden, said a few words, and wrung its neck as I separated its head from its body. Death would have been instantaneous, which was good for the pigeon. But, as I always am whenever I have to despatch a living creature, I am inconsolably sad. Poor pigeon, but he’s the lucky one. I have to add it to the things I’ve done which were necessary but not nice.