The circle of life

So Friday was a bit unusual. A very old and scraggy looking pigeon pecked around our rabbit hutches, seemingly with no energy to fly anywhere. It looked pretty miserable and it didn't seem to want to talk about it's issues. It went underneath the hutch instead.

It was then I remembered that I am really not great with animals and birds. Alive or dead.

I have close to a slug phobia. They actually make me nauseous. Paul has been trapping them in a pool of lager every night and disposing of them. Apparently there is a mass slug grave in front of the bug hotel. I don't want to think about it.

Once I thought there was a dead hedgehog in a groundsheet that had been left rather too long shoved under a bench in the garden. I picked up the groundsheet and put the whole thing in the bin. Paul came home, removed the groundsheet from the bin and the hedgehog ran off. And yes I do know hedgehogs are nocturnal, I'm just an idiot.

Then there was the badger incident. It was trapped in our garden and couldn't get through the gate to escape. We heard the gate bell ringing frantically. I was painting the bathroom at the time and was frankly terrified. Paul went down and opened the gate (with some trepidation however). I heard him saying "Out you go Mr Badger". Very respectful. And much braver than me.

Oh and dead fish. Not great with them either.

So I spent much of the day concerned about the pigeon. Yes about it's wellbeing, but moreover how the hell I was going to remove it from under the hutch when it shuffled off it's mortal coil.

In the meantime one of our rabbits decided to dig a kind of trench (nowhere near the slug grave thankfully) and laid down in it, looking to all intents and purposes, well, dead. Seriously I have never seen it so still. I called Paul. We stroked her and talked in a worried fashion. She didn't move a muscle and her glass eyes stared upwards (well sideways, she is a rabbit). Then she stood up and ran around the garden at high speed refusing to go back in her hutch, like every other sodding night.

Finally, after dark, the time came to remove the pigeon as it had passed away next to the hutch. The decision was taken (after about a second) that Paul was going to deal with it's departure. He scooped it up a child's pink plastic spade after the third attempt and walked it around the house and down the road, dropping it only a couple of times. He then threw it ceremoniously over the end wall. A natural funeral is what it would have wanted, plus I didn't want to dig it a grave in case for obvious reasons. I should add over the wall is a fairly dense wooded thicket not someone's garden.

It's been a couple of days now and no more deaths or near deaths thank goodness. I'm trying not to think about rabbit demise. It won't go well for me when it happens. But they are supposed to live about 8 years so hopefully we don't have to worry just yet.

I am wondering however whether I should seek out some therapy...