Stop The Pigeon!

Hi there people,

Well this is the first blog of many from 'Things That Make You Go Ooo!' which we thought we would do as an extension to our Fab Web store www.ttmygo.co.uk. I thought about doing a welcome post but then thought, Naaaah!. What we want is Ooo! so i will just get cracking straight away with this completely mad occurence that has literally 'flown' into Ooo! HQ.

Some 'friends' of ours called with a mercy mission because they knew of the 'extreme' wildlife background of one of our team. They had come across a small box which had been kicked around by the rowdies in Windsor town center all night and had somehow, somewhat fortunately, landed on the doorstep of a design firm called 'Vibrandt'. To the surprise of the girls that opened it in the morning, expecting to find a half eaten kebab and some random item of clothing, they were greeted by the terrified squeaking of two VERY young, very scared, very poorly baby Pigeons.

Into the building went the box and all the girls...

lots of "Oooohhing" and "Aaahhhing"

...because they are actually really cute, all the boys hackling to get rid of the "verminous little creatures!" (Nasty Them!). Calls went out for "worms", (for the record don't ever feed a baby bird a worm, it is likely to want to make friends with it, imprint on it as its mother or choke when you try and force it into its little beak!) and then Laura who is a female, Steve Irwin'esque (RIP) lover of all things living. By this time the girls had also recalled the RSPCA who, and this is quite normal because of the sheer number of pigeons they get calls about, would have just put them to sleep!!!!!

So RSPCA sent on their way and into the hands of the 'Bird Lady Of Windsor'. In the box they were and back to Ooo! HQ they came. We couldn't see them destitute and motherless now, even if they are pigeons, as everything deserves a life we think you'll agree. Now the question was how did we feed these little bundles of fluff? Well believe it or not Laura has actually done this before and she has a proven technique for feeding these hungry little critters. It is called the 'Blue Mama'. Basically what it is is a kitchen sponge braced in a frame of cardboard with a slit cut in it about 1 inch long.

What happens is that a baby bird normally puts its beak into the mama birds beak and she, you're going to like this, basically pukes food down its throat. In the Pigeon world it's called Pigeon Milk. Nice!

Anyway, so we have this 'Blue Mama' (we have attached some pictures for you) and we have some 'sma' new baby milk and some organic baby egg custard.

"Oh it's good isn't it?"

With a small plastic syringe (without the needle i might add), we have to draw the milk into the tube, put the syringe in some hot water to make the milk warm (temperature same for a humanoid baby), and encourage the babies to put their beaks through the 'Blue Mama'. It took a lot of persaverance but eventually BOTH of the little fluff balls did it. Beaks through, big wide gape and empty the syringe gently into the back of their throats.













After much reading on the internet we learnt that you have to be careful of a little hole at the back of their beaks which apparently leads straight to their little lungs. Get food in there and they are done for! Luckily we haven't so far and they are doing OK! HURRAH! HURRAH! HAURRAH! So we are just about to put them to bed, (oh yes, to bed!), and see what the next installment brings...