"The World's Smallest Dog Whistle"

Hand & Egg courtesy of Deirdre.


Whats that pigeon doing up there perched above that doorway? It was peering out from a kind of small opening not to dissimilar from a mouse's hole in the skirting board of a Tom & Jerry cartoon. There seems to be a man watching between it and the line of people walking underneath the doorway as if waiting for something. The line I was in was moving slowly towards the bird, which gave me time to use my confused mind to think what the man might be waiting for! Can you teach a bird to poo on someone? That would be interesting wouldn't it? And what better place to perch your bird than just above a doorway? I looked at the man's hands to see if he had some sort of clicker or was making signals with his fingers that the bird would see as a que to start dropping the warmish grey/white substance contained inside it's little bottom. But he wasn't....nor did he have a special clicker. He wasn't blinking funny to the bird nor whistling. So what was he doing? I was nearly there now and was eager for something to happen before I passed underneath, never to see the man & his bird ever again.
I was right there now....right below the hole and the bird. 'Come on then! Do something, this is driving me crazy!' I said to myself. Then I noticed something else just inside the birds little doorway. It looked like an egg....sort of speckeled and very fragile looking. It seemed to be moving as if something was living inside. It must be the birds egg and her baby. Then all of a sudden the egg began to move, slowly rolling forward as if being nudged from behind, right to the edge of the opening....past the bird it went and rolled right over the lip of the hole and plunged to the floor! My heart began to pound as fast as a pedigree race horses at the end of the final furlong and my belly felt as if it were full of the worlds entire stock of butterflies! I had to catch this egg or the babies inside would smash to pieces when it reached the rock solid ground! My arms instinctively rose from my sides and reached up into the air ready to catch the precious egg! My surroundings....the doorway...the man....the rest of the people in the line disappeared from my peripheral vision and all I saw was the egg falling.....which seemed to last as long as an entire length of an episode of "The A Team", before it finally dropped into my warm, shaking, clammy palms!
I felt ecstatic with my grand performance and gently clutched the egg to my hard beating chest to protect it from any damage. As I stared at this delicate little shell of life, the rest of my surroundings began to fade back into view. The line of people that I was part of only moments earlier began to surround me and before I knew it I was trapped in a small circle of eager eyed people! I felt trapped and needed to get away! Then the egg began to rattle & gently vibrate...probably triggered by the fall and the heat coming from my hands...and small cracks started to appear all over the eggs speckeled surface! The egg split into two as a whole bunch of sweaty looking tiny yellow & white baby chicks began to ooze from the two cracked halves. My small trembling hands could hardly contain them all and I was afraid of dropping one! Everyone around me were talking and pointing and getting far too close for comfort. I tried to move away, cradling the babies in my arms as they tried to clamber up the sides of my scooped hands to escape and a few of them fell out of my grip and dropped to the floor, each with a tiny thud! The other people quickly scooped them up and disappeared like thieves into the night. The shell....once the safest place in these little creatures lives...dropped to the floor also, which helped me handle the tiny balls of rapidly drying out yellow & white fluff all the better.
Then as I was trying to stay apart from the others, I heard someone calling urgently from behind me to stop! I quickly came to a halt and this woman soon caught up with me and breathlessly said that I needed the egg shell for the babies to eat or they would die of starvation! It was just me, the woman and the babies now......safely re-united with their shell.....all the other people had gone, no doubt chasing after the other people that stole the fallen babies.
The woman stood directly before me, almost touching toes with me & carefully placed the broken shell into the middle of the wriggling babies and they soon stopped trying to escape and instead began to eat the shell and all it's thin white membrane. The babies were fully dried out now and already looked to have doubled in size. It was silent now, all apart from the mildly excited sound of the woman & I breathing and just then at that moment I thought I could hear the babies tweeting. It was very very quiet and I had to put my ear right over the small pile of babies & my shaking cupped hands to hear them properly....and indeed it was the babies making the sound. It was almost inaudible, as if each and every one of the feeding babies had the worlds smallest dog whistle inserted into their tiny throats.



Jason


P.s. Happy Birthday Tarn...for the 10th:)






(C) JPT 2007.........1033.67 miles.