this morning, i realized that while i'd expected the worst, i hadn't really planned on it. which i realize now would have been rather obvious had i bothered to read what i'd posted last night. so when i peered into the little chamberlain's cubby and found it lying at an odd angle over the dish of crumbs i'd given it last night, i sort of just looked at it for a while.
for those of you reading this blog who have more sense, it may console you to know that i'm kicking myself now for being so impulsive last night. of course the little chamberlain was dying. of course it would be dead by morning. of course i'm an idiot for having potentially brought 'a plague on both your houses'. actually, technically speaking, there are four 'houses' here i could have 'brought the plague on', so to speak. good grief. and the children...
not that a single avian (now there's a red flag word if ever i heard one) death is automatically something to worry about. i believe i may have mentioned it before that walking through town in Spore City is almost like walking through the end of The Birds; i can almost believe the soundtrack for that movie had been recorded right here in the city. i'm sure pigeons die in residential buildings all the time hereabouts, and most of them probably go unnoticed.
having got up early to check on the little chamberlain, i decided to go out for a run. (not as impressive as that sounds. i go out for a twenty minute run about once every one or two months, the run staggered into twenty-second half-sprints. so no, i'm hardly out there for my health, much less getting ready for a marathon. it's just something i do every now and then.) i found myself watching the birds: mostly columbiforms and passerines--a lot of them corvine, though some of the ones i've seen might actually be mynas (which would make them, i just recently learned, starlings, i.e., Sturnidae, not Corvidae)--and the occasional, less visible apodiforms (i saw my first hummingbird last week, on my way to work, darting in and out of the hedges at the bottom of the stairs leading up to Queenstown station). i suppose i must have seen a lot of them before--hanging about the outer walls of the building, in the fields and empty lots out back, on the sidewalks and streets and by the cafes and hawker centers and railway lines &c--but of course, one can't be too sure. they all look pretty much the same to me. but as i went running, i had the sneaking suspicion i was being talked about...
of course it was only my imagination. of course it was. what's important is, apart from that, none of the birds i saw on my run seemed to be behaving unusually. not in any particular way i could identify. of course i'd have to get in the little nooks and crannies where the pigeons actually roost to know for sure, but that's well beyond my personal sense of initiative, so let's leave it at that.
still, all this has left me--admittedly not for the first time--hankering for the old lab. it isn't the work, it's the access. (normally i'd say it's the people, but in this case i've got more practical concerns in mind.) i could have performed a full autopsy on the little chamberlain back home, had body fluid and tissue specimens processed at the clinical pathology lab--bit of an abuse of resources, i admit, but one i could have justified with talk of public health and safety and all that, or just palmed-off for a favor...that doesn't quite sound right, but i'm sure you see what i mean--and examined them myself; after which i could have said, with scientific certitude, that the cause of the little chamberlain's death was most definitely undetermined.
i could say that now, of course, and i *had* done a cursory external examination of the little chamberlain's body (and found nothing unusual, by the by), but it just wouldn't be the same.
well, we all have to make our choices, and at some point you've got to stick to your guns. i have to remind myself how utterly miserable i was back there, nevermind how miserable work can be here.
anyway. i wish i could say i at least provided the little chamberlain with a comfortable place to spend its last few hours on earth, but, to be perfectly honest, i expect i probably only gave it even more reason to be terrified.
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