Since my days here at the DGFD are dwindling down to a precious few (shameless lyric plagiarism alert) I figured I’d better take full advantage while stuff is fresh(ish) in my mind.
We caught two back-to-back this morning, fairly quickly out of the chute. After we returned to the firehouse, while wandering around the apparatus bay floor mid-project, I noticed a pigeon sitting out behind the station. In and of itself this is a little out of the ordinary, we don’t seem to have very many pigeons hanging around here. I’m not sure why, we just don’t. So I noticed him (truth be told, I didn’t check the gender. Furthermore, I’m not sure how to check even if I had) I also noticed (Hey, pigeon A&P wasn’t part of my paramedic training, so what can I say?) he seemed to be sitting in an awkward position. I finished my project and decided to walk out and see if there was something wrong with the pigeon.
He let me get fairly close to him, maybe four or five feet away, without any response on his part. His right wing seemed to be out of whack (medical term). I figured he got clipped by a car since Highland Avenue was about fifty feet from where he sat and it’s four lanes of people basically ignoring the 35 mph speed limit. I asked TJ, our resident quinoa expert, if quinoa was a grain. He said he thought it was. I knew we didn’t have any bird seed here but I was reasonably sure we had quinoa. Don’t ask. Young guys. Any way, I grabbed a handful and it looked enough like bird seed to satisfy me. I took it out to the bird and dropped it down in front of him. As I did, he (the bird, not TJ btw) staggered a couple of feet away.
By this time, TJ and Rob both came out to see what I was doing. As we talked about the pigeon, TJ asked about the name of the crow from Shawshank Redemption and thus, a firehouse name was born. Jake the pigeon seemed indifferent towards my choice of food for him. I figured something needed to be done and since we have no pigeon specific protocols to follow, I started making the rounds telephonically to see what could be done.
Take a guess how many phone calls it took to find a pigeon person. Go ahead, I’ll wait…
If you said seven, you win.
Now, in the time it took me to make these seven phone calls we ran to the Jewels for the days groceries, in fact I made five of the calls while Rob and TJ knocked out the shopping. As we were paying for our groceries, we caught a call, followed immediately by another. So by the time we got back to the house maybe 45 minutes had passed. As we pulled up to the back door I looked for Jake but couldn’t see him.
Until Rob pointed out a small, feathered, lump laying right next to the garage door. Poor Jake had met his maker. Of course Rob quickly pointed out that it was probably due to dehydration, since I’d neglected to put any water out for Jake. Or the possibility that quinoa is not, in fact, bird seed and that it exploded in Jake’s gullet hastening his shuffle off this mortal coil.
Sigh.
Lastly, I just want to give a shout to my first Captain from here. The doorbell rang this afternoon and in walked Paul. I haven’t seen him in quite some time and I told him I was honored he stopped by to wish me well. I meant it too. He was a good dude to work for and I learned a lot from him in our short time together. We chatted for a little bit, talked about the old days as well as more recent events and then it was time for him to go.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, the people around here are what will be missed. Well, most of them. When I thought about what I was going to do with this today it was going to go off in a completely different direction. Kind of a “Bob, why do you hate me?” turn.
Until Jake started me off on this track.
Maybe next time.
Peace.