I am just over 5 weeks into having Peach and she has absolutely stolen my cold dead heart! However last week she embarked on a totally unplanned, unexpected and unnecessary journey… 

I had woken up, let her out of her abode (a very stylish cage fit for a queen, obviously!) She had flown up to the beams on my ceiling as usual and then landed on my head for a while. I head off to the shower, unassuming and excited to start my day. I return to the living room to an unusual and eerie silence… no flapping, no coos and not even the tiny pitter patter of her little footsies. I check on the mezzanine to see if she has decided to relax on the couch… but alas, she has not… for where art thou Peach? 

At this moment i turned around to see the mesh against the window had peeled slightly and she had clearly been watching The great escape whilst i was asleep the previous evening! My jaw, alongside my heart, sank to the soles of my size 9 feet. I ran to the window… I live on the third floor of a three floor apartment building… that’s right baby we penthouse… i joke… it’s just a normal flat. Across from our building is another building that plays host to a huge flock of pibbins 24/7. I stared intently trying to see if she had joined them, i called my girlfriend and she ran home from work and we spent half an hour crying, cooing and calling her name (she definitely hasn’t got a clue how that works yet, i think she was just referred to as ‘Pigeon’ prior to moving in with us. I was devastated. I felt i had let her down… this lady was pulling on my heartstrings with her beautiful feathers. 

After an hour i began to lose hope, accept the fact she had found a better life in the skies of England. She was raised in an aviary and has only become an indoor since we got her… in short she has the survival skills of a teaspoon. I called the RSPB, RSPCA and every local bird rescue i could find the number for. I was genuinely under the impression someone out there had a magic trick with a crane and they would just emerge from the smoke and save her then we would go our separate ways… it is no surprise this was not the case. 

Then… I saw a tail far too fancy for the pigeon clientele that frequented the building across from us… could it be? surprise… IT WAS. She was socialising and mingling with the locals as if she belonged there. I watched her struggle to work out how to land, have the flock fly away and leave her alone and then finally watched her fly to a building even further away and 2 stories higher… and sit there… for 20 minutes. She then flew away above my building and i was shocked. Frozen. I sank into my couch and stared at her food bowl, best box and favourite perch on the windowsill. Seeing her fly away was worse than not seeing her at all… it was like watching the hope slip through my sweaty hands. 

4 hours pass and i am on the phone to a lovely lady called Julie from a rescue centre. In tears and asking for advice I had no idea how i was going to deal with the guilt and loss of my Princess Peach… i also decided at this point i may not have children… if this is how it feels when i lose a pigeon then god knows how i’d deal with it being my child… although my child would most likely not climb out of a top floor window and fly around with the other neighbourhood children. Anyway… whilst on the phone to Julie i hear flapping outside my window… THERE SHE WAS… Clutching at the tiny piece of window frame with her toes and securing herself by opening her wings against the wall… despite the large windowsill directly underneath her, hence my distinct distrust in her survival skills… if, as a pigeon, you are struggling to land… i don’t assume your chances are too great. I jump to my feet and scream JULIE, SHES OUTSIDE!!! 

She eventually falls to the windowsill and begins pecking at the millions of seeds i put there to entice her back… i was still… cooing like a madman… she eventually walks to her nest box and jumps right in… looks at me as if to say ‘why on earth would you allow me to do this human’ and then sat in the box for 15 minutes. I like to think she was going over the events of the day in her mind, the brief romance with a street pigeon who was a bad boy. The views of the city and the possible digestion of a dropped tray of chips from a mid day drunks lunch. The sheer lack of flat surfaces to land on and the struggle that can entail. 

What a day she must’ve had. And for her to come back or even know where to go as a fantail… blows my mind. Thanks for coming home little lady. 

The end.

Video ( Her on the super far away buildings, basically saying ‘screw you human, see you never, then her washing off the sins of the day in her bath after her return)

Peach and her unexpected adventure!