One for sorrow

For a moment this morning I thought it was snowing. Unusual perhaps for early June, but as I was busy checking the baseball scores I thought nothing of it. The Yankees lost their 5th straight game, which is nothing short of orgasmic.

As it turns out it wasn't snowing; it was a flurry of dandelion spores from the surrounding fields. I stood outside and became quite upset at the thought that most would land on fallow ground. Silly I know. I mean, it's not as if I burst into tears every time I spray my own seed on the carpet / curtains / grass or wherever. And if every dandelion spore produced another dandelion, the world would literally be overwhelmed with dandelions, which would be mad. Still, that's nature for you.

Speaking of which, Alice and I were confronted with nature at its most bloodthirsty yesterday evening. Driving through Binfield (en route, incidentally, to a poker game at Reading's Madjeski Stadium with the likes of Darryl Wong and Tony Chapman - marv), I suddenly had to swerve as a bird landed flapping and helpless on the road in front of me. At Lady Miros' insistence, we then of course had to turn back to check on its wellbeing (I'd missed, more by luck than judgement). The scene that we came across was really quite disturbing.

The bird in question was lying on the pavement, dazed and confused and hardly moving. For the sake of ornithological accuracy, I think it was some sort of jay. The reason for its distress was the presence of four large, totally psychotic magpies, who were in the process of pecking it to death. Bizarrely the first thought that came into my head was that he was some sort of paedophile bird being lynched by a gang of avian chavs. It's quite sad that modern culture has invaded my thought processes so irredemably.

Anywho, naturally I screeched to a halt and the saintly Lady Miros galloped to the rescue. Our feeble brown chum was seemingly in a bad way. With the magpies still cackling in the background, we decided the best course of action was to offload the fella on someone who might actually give a shit. This was particularly lucky as we were just down the road from Michelle, an animal nut who looks after our guinea pigs when we're away.

On arrival at Michelle's various things happened in a matter of seconds. Firstly, our ungrateful captive started screaming, loudly and repeatedly. Then, in a wild panic, he dug his talons into Alice's fingers with all his might, and started to tear. Then Alice started screaming. Whilst I bravely attempted to extricate him from her grasp, he swivelled his head and bit me, drawing blood. Bastard! It was at this point that Michelle answered the door, to a scene of carnage, with a look of something approaching terror.

The upshot of it all is that we eventually managed to deposit the vicious little sod in a cage, where he showed every sign of being none the worse for his ordeal. Alice was rushed off to have her hands washed, and demonstrated a Messiah-like ability to heal, as she emerged without a scratch on any of her delicate little pinkies. Meanwhile, I stood there quietly bleeding, wondering how long it would take for bird flu to strike me down.

Now being in a rush, we hotfooted it to Reading, leaving a rather stunned Michelle to deal with the bird. I hope she eats it.