“A trapped pigeon ripped a small opening into the real world, and just for a moment some humans peered through the gap and saw a glint of truth, left there on the ground like a feather in a car park puddle, dropped from a rock dove’s wing …”
My non-fiction piece ‘Morris’, the true story of a feral pigeon trapped inside a superstore atrium, has been published in Dark Mountain 21.
The given theme for this issue was “confluence”, and I immediately wanted to write about the spaces where animal worlds meet human worlds. A few months earlier, I’d been involved in the rescue of the young pigeon we now know as Morris, so it was easy to write about him and his predicament, in the hope that his experience casts light on wider issues around how we share, or in so many cases refuse to share, the world with other species.
I was grateful to work with editor Anthea Lawson, author most recently of the wonderful The Entangled Activist (Perspectiva Press).
As a lovely bonus, the editors also decided to include a whole-page photo of the real-life Morris, photographed by his rehabilitator, my friend Emily Mountford.
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