An Old Friend Fading.

I’m fairly sure that George is dying. George is a cock pheasant which has been visiting my bird tables for several months. and I always felt some sympathy for him. He had a damaged or malformed beak, you see, which caused the top and bottom to cross over, and that must have made feeding difficult. But feed he obviously did, at least up to a point, because he survived the winter and I became quite fond of him.

He was clearly at the bottom of the pecking order though, because I saw him being bullied by another cock bird one day, and all George could do was keep running away until his adversary lost interest. He obviously didn’t have the strength to offer even minimal resistance.

This evening I saw George resting on his stomach on next door’s garden, which is an unusual thing for a pheasant to do. They will occasionally perch on some raised position somewhere, but when they’re on the ground they tend to be constantly on the move searching for food. I went about my business, but when I went outside later to have a cup of tea in the garden I heard a commotion by the front porch. George was being attacked by his old adversary again, but he wasn’t running away this time. He was spread-eagled on the ground looking completely helpless. I shooed the attacker away, brought George a bowl of bird seed, and kept an eye on him.

He made no attempt to feed, but lay on his stomach the whole time seemingly too weak to do anything. It seemed obvious to me that George was coming to his end, whether through age, starvation, or an ailment like avian flu – which is a serious epidemic at the moment in the UK – I had no way of knowing, but it seemed all up for the poor old lad.

I decided to put him into an old outbuilding for the night. It’s the only place the rats can’t get into, and it seemed the best thing I could do for him. It seemed to me that dying in peace in a quiet, dark place was better than being eaten alive by rats in the garden or the shed. Such a prospect would have haunted me, I think. Dying is one thing, suffering quite another.

And so I fully expect to find him dead when I go out in the morning, and then I can remove his body to the ditch at the side of the lane where sundry creatures might find sustenance thereon.

(I heard somebody ask me the question while this was going on: ‘Why do you bother with something as insignificant as a pheasant?’ And I answered: ‘Because it is my considered suspicion that every living creature is an expression of the universal consciousness. And as I live, so does everything else.’)