Tuesday 18 January 2011

under the crescent moon, or ... the death of a seagull

dating the animal doctor has changed my life in more ways than one. in scotland a vetinary surgeon is bound to offer a twenty four hour emergency service. result - the phone will ring in the small wee hours and my girl will roll out of bed and be on her way to tend to the sick and injured of the animal world.

one evening, fairly soon after we first met, we were on our way home from an outing. her phone rang, on the other end, a gentleman who had found a seagull with a broken wing, as she was not home he had put the bird in her front garden!
yeah, i guess you can tell, the animal doctor is a village dweller - what can i say!

we were thankful that 'the boys' were safely ensconced in the house and that the seagull would at least have been spared the indignity of being eaten by a hound dog!
the winter dark was with us, a crescent moon rode high in a clear and frosty sky. my girl aimed her car lights into the darkness of the garden and turned to me ...

"will you lend me a hand?"

wtf! i am a happily retired flat dweller sans pets. i hardly know this woman and she is expecting me to rummage around in the dark cold and actually capture a seagull! cool as a cucumber i said ...

"yeah sure, of course."

it took us a little while to find and lay our hands on mr.seagull, the wing was so badly broken there would be no fixing it.
so on a dark winter evening under the light of a crescent moon, i held the seagull immobile whilst my new friend administered death to replace pain.

1 comment:

Mike S said...

So much better than freezing to death in pain.