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Gabe & Louis: The Stowaway Pigeons

Jun 23, 2014

Posted in: Uncategorized

On a cool spring morning, a new sea-can (c-can) storage unit was delivered at the Gabriel Dumont Institute building in Regina. Arnold Racette soon realized that two baby pigeons were stuck up on top of the unit. They must have come with the c-can – they were stowaways. Clearly, their mom wasn’t coming to collect them; so, Arnie and Gareth Griffiths suggested that we call the Humane Society.

The Humane Society said that they do not deal with birds and referred us to the City of Regina. The City said that all they could do is come and collect the pigeons. I asked what they would do with them afterwards and they said they will just “put ‘em to sleep.” If we just left them up there they would die of heat exposure anyway. It was then that Suzanne DePeel declared that she would adopt the pigeons.

Soon the rescue crew grew to include Arnie, Darcie DeBruyne, Jacquelene Halliday, Ryan McLeod, Suzanne and myself.

Armed with a broom, a couple of boxes and a ladder, we made our way to the c-can. Arnie raised the ladder and proceeded to walk up. When he got to the top, one of the pigeons freaked out and took a deadly, flying jump off of the c-can. Despite being unable to fly, the little guy landed gracefully on the ground and ran in between the building and the c-can. The other pigeon was apprehended without incident.

The crew nominated me to squeeze in between the c-can and the building with a broom to shoe the little guy out while Darcie would catch him on the other end with a box. After several tiring attempts, we were successful.

We made them a comfortable bed in the box and gave them some water until Suzanne was able to take them home. Ryan printed off “how to take care of a pigeon” instructions for her to take as well. Arnie even grew fond of them and decided they needed names: Gabe and Louis. The two have since hitched a ride with Suzanne to Prince Albert and are happily nesting in a shed.

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