Dead Pigeon

There is a dead pigeon in my backyard -- a medium-sized slate-blue feathered corpse just two meters on the other side of the wall behind which my baby daughter sleeps. I can see the pitiful pigeon remains anytime I look out of the window in our kitchen. Preserved by the December-chilled concrete, the deceased bird lies with his feet curled toward the house and his head toward the neighbor's fence... It's disgusting -- but what's most disgusting is that I've been avoiding the dead pigeon in my backyard for a week and a half now.

To tell the truth, I'm scared to deal with the dead pigeon in my backyard. Any kind of interaction with the filth and pestilence of our backyard's pigeons is unpleasant -- especially during this time of the year when we humans forsake our outside spaces to the pigeons' foul rule of our urban canyon. Still, thinking about the logistics of this particular transaction is especially distasteful...

If I were to dispose of the bird, I would have to walk through the sludge of pigeon poop that has plastered our pavement; use a plastic bag or something like that to scoop up the maggoty matter (we have no shovel -- nor typically any need for a shovel -- in central Amsterdam); carry the coffin/bag back through the sludge; stop at the entrance to our kitchen in order to change shoes (my wife has this strange disdain for people tracking pigeon sludge across the house); walk the twenty meters to the neighborhood trash receptacle (hoping that none of the neighbors stop to talk at such an inopportune moment); and then finally come back inside to scrub my arms up to the elbows, like a surgeon, to disinfect any remaining traces of pestilence.

Thus, because this scenario does not appeal to me, I keep putting it off. It's silly, I know, but I initially kind of hoped that the pigeon was just taking a long nap and would eventually flutter back to life and resume his perch on a neighbor's balcony, cooing strange stories to his feathered friends as they rain down poop upon our backyard... But after a week of waiting, I determined that I would have no such luck. Even so, I'm not in any hurry to dispose of the dead pigeon in our backyard. Because it's ugly and disgusting. Because it's easier to let it be, since we're not using the backyard much these days, anyway. And, well, I've avoided the situation because there's just nothing fun about cleaning up pigeon remains.

Still, everytime I look out of that kitchen window, the bird body reminds me that it will not go away by itself. And, well, I must remember that there's nothing fun about having a dead pigeon in your backyard either. So one of these days, I suppose I'll do something. One of these days...