Alice Hutchinson - Issue 34

Alice is originally from Belfast and now lives and works on the North Coast.

She has contributed to various Tenx9 storytelling events and enjoys writing about the intersection of the magical and the everyday.

---

The Latin Name for Pigeon

First week: new job. Familiar Campus: new role, blending the known and the new.

Day one: lunch break. Walking through automatic doors, outside to in. Entering calm from wind.  To meet a flash of wings within.  Trapped in the hallway, high-ceiling flying, a pigeon. Admiring the airborne shape and hoping it makes an escape, I walk on.

Day two: morning. Habit forming, the new-job-walk towards automatic doors.

Guano adorns the grey laminate floor. Bird droppings, dropped from on high. And from above comes, (unseen but heard) a frequent coo.

“Coo.”

A strange muzak. I fear this creature, not made for hallways, will not last long.

Is it too late to leave it something to eat? Dropped breadcrumbs in the hallway: the entrance space, the place that receives many feet. A place between, the coming from and going to. I imagine standing between the automatic doors, beckoning the bird to its egress. I think of its stress. Does it grasp the concept of a door? Does it have the strength to fly towards the fresh external air? I would surely be removed from my grand stand. Told off for letting in the cold. My imagined mercy thwarted.

Afternoon: the errant droppings are still there. Uncleaned. I wonder if anyone else has noticed this Jackson Pollock inspired artwork of desperation? The cooing continues.

By the end of the day, there is neither coo, nor poo. The space is clean but feels like something is missing, a life. And yet as I turn towards home. Overheard words.

“How is the wee bird today?”

“Still there?”

“Still there.”

A glimmer of hope. Still alive. I await the news. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

Day three. The wee bird is there. Graced with its presence in the place not made for birds. Not made for birds and yet we have furnished it with many high-perch-places. Beams ready for clawed feet. Places to perch and expel the small cooing sounds. Places to perch and expel other things.  Gracing the floor with new Pollock patterns.

Today, however, high windows are open wide. Skyward exits ready to release the feathered cause of Cleaning-Team-frustration. Interloper ushered out. No longer held to automatic-door-mercy.  

At lunchtime, I am eager to see if the great escape has been made. But still the pigeon is beam-sitting above. Droppings adorning chair and stairs. Three days alone in our lofty halls. How has it sustained itself?   Perhaps we messy, crumb-leaving people have left a path of survival. Anonymous Hansel and Gretels, prolonging a pigeon’s life. Feeding this unlikely friend through our wasteful ways.

And then…

A flutter of wings between the steepled white triangle of metal ceiling struts. Beaming from beams on high. A not quite dove in our not quite sky. A second pigeon alights beside the first in the church-like heights. A fleeting feature of my afternoon and yet to know my pigeon is no longer alone, brings both sadness and joy.

All I can witness is for a moment, they are here, and I am here with them.

Through the next week there are still downy feathers on the stairs but no other sign of either bird. I hope they escaped, that these remaining feathers are only remnants of their stay. I hope that if they passed away, they did so at peace, perhaps together. Cooing at the unfairness that their delicate, flight capable bodies are too small, inadequate for the sensors of the automatic doors. I hope not to find a body, fallen at last. And that the cleaning team might lift the lifeless form with as much respect as can be afforded to a deceased creature – which for their purposes classifies as a ‘mess’. Bird bodies placed in a bin. I hope, with a thought, if only a small one, for the life snuffed out. Hope of different sizes, on different days. Escape. Death. The open window. The closed bin.

I pass a single feather on the floor. With birds on the brain, I have learned their Latin name. Columba. A scientific name, failing to define dove from pigeon. A name of saints. Columba. Meaning, headlong diver, swimmer of air.

Walking the now familiar way beneath high beams and windows towards the automatic doors.

I see…

A pigeon. Strutting the floor at the top of the stairs. I stop and stare.

The Latin name for pigeon is Coumba. Hello Columba.

Hello. Interior interloper. Excrement expressionist. Crumb cruncher.  

Hello.