The last flight of Poo-geon

I suppose that February can officially be titled "Flashback February" for me. Grey, (my best friend) and I had given Trixie a bath. Its funny because I actually had a dream about this last night, and in said dream I was hugging Trixie and said, "I'm real glad you don't smell like poo anymore. Or eggs." I remember her smelling like poo and eggs. Anyways, that isn't the point of this blog. This picture reminded me of the most tragic experience I ever had concerning an animal.

Macey's was about 6 blocks away from my house. Back then, there were lots of fields and orchards around Orem. Not so much now. On the way to Macey's, there was a rather large field with a billboard in the middle. Grey and I, being natural scrounges, decided one day to go root around underneath it to try and find some quality garbage. I guess finding massive piles of pigeon feces was the next best thing. Whilst being amazed by the enormous amounts of excrement, we suddenly saw something flapping around in the weeds. It was a pigeon. After a few min of chasing it about, we finally caught it. We headed straight home, all thoughts of 10 cent Macey's ice cream cones abandoned. Flying rats are way cooler than ice cream.

Luckily Grey had an empty rabbit cage at his house (empty due to the fact that my cat had previously slaughtered it, I think) and so we kept the bird there. That wretched pigeon shat on me twice, so we named it Poo-geon. Quite clever.

All summer long we raised that stupid bird. We would take it out to Grey's enormous back yard and throw it up in the air in order to teach it to fly. As though the stupid damn pigeon didn't already know how to fly. Anyways, by the end of the summer, poogeon could finally mostly fly. We decided it was time to release him back to his pigeon world.

I approached the billboard in the field, Poogeon contentedly sitting upon my finger. "Are you ready little guy? Are you ready to be free once more?" Looking quite noble, as a pigeon naturally would, he seemed to look me in the eye and say, "sure. I'm sick of you throwing my ass into the air all the time and keeping me in a smelly rabbit cage." Whatever else, I felt like I had done a good deed over the summer. I had spent my valuable summer days nursing this majestic bird back to health. With a lump in my throat, I tossed Poogeon into the air one final time. His wings spread and up he soared, molting away his captivity. "Yes! Fly! Go! I cheered, as he drew ever closer to the landing on the billboard. Suddenly, within a foot of his destination Poogeon began to angle downward. I watched in horror as my entire summer suddenly dive bombed into the middle of state street, and was utterly crushed under a speeding car tire, blood, feathers, and viscera shooting out in all directions. I stood there in shock as the last feathers slowly floated to the earth. What kind of moronic pigeon commits suicide? How could he do that to me? I wasted my whole bloody summer taking care of him, and he goes and offs himself, first chance he gets. Filthy ungrateful bird. I vowed from that point forth to never help another animal. I would only shoot them with rifles and eat them. At McDonnald's. Or anywhere else.

I couldn't wait till the next time I ate pigeon Mc'Nuggets.