"Pete, get up, mate. We've got beakball practice in half an hour! ...Pete??"

Those of you who follow me on Facebook may have seen me tagged by close family and friends in photos and stories about dead birds and animals... the most recent being the "don't throw your gum on the floor or birds will eat it and die" campaign that circulated a few months back. 

Now, before you go thinking I'm some sort of Patrick Hockstetter wannabe, murdering animals and keeping them in a junkyard fridge, I figured I should probably explain why I'm tagged in these God-awful posts and why everybody seems to find it so hilarious... which it is, but wasn't at the time.

I worked very close to the local flower gardens in Dorset, and would occasionally head down there to eat my lunch, usually under a tree on a hidden ants nest because I'm lucky like that. One afternoon I decided to take my sausage and egg baguette down to said gardens and eat it there instead of on the beach, where I would undoubtedly get a mouthful of sand every three bites. Not long after I sat down, a group of three pigeons arrived. For the purposes of this tale we'll call them Dave, Rick and Pete. I ignored them for a while, and managed to polish off most of my baguette, before feeling guilty and deciding to share it with them out of the goodness of my own heart. 

I threw a chunk of my baguette to Dave, who sort of pecked bits off it and ate it in stages. The next to receive my bread bounty was Rick, a scrawny thing with a missing toe and what appeared to be pigeon Tourette's. He held the chunk of bread down with his foot and tore it into several pieces before eating each bit separately, with occasional breaks to twitch and stare menacingly at me. Talk about ungrateful.

Pete was stood gormlessly eyeballing me, waiting his turn. I threw him a piece of baguette exactly the same size as I had given to Dave and Rick, assuming that he was smart enough to follow their lead and peck the crap out of it. That wasn't what he did. Instead, he decided to try and swallow the entire chunk in ONE GO.

I freaked out a little as he struggled to breathe, flapping his wings like he was trying to take off. My brain repeated the phrase "please cough it up, please cough it up, please cough it up," as I watched him get weaker and weaker, wheezing like an elderly chain smoker. Finally, a minute or so later, there he was... dead as a dodo. 

I HAD KILLED A POOR DEFENCELESS ANIMAL. 

I WAS A BIRD MURDERER.

A BIRDERER.

I might add, I did not take this photograph. I'm not *that* sick.

I stayed for a few more minutes before heading back into work to spend the rest of the day riddled with overwhelming guilt and sadness. "Is this what Ted Bundy felt like whenever he killed somebody?? WHY WOULD HE EVER DO IT A SECOND TIME?! THIS IS AWFUL!!"

And so, poor old Pete the pigeon, through his own stupidity and my act of "kindness" was lost to the earth that day, and bound to forever haunt me via the taunts of my friends and family over Facebook. 

Rest in peace, Pete the pigeon.