The homing pigeon that refuses to go home (Czech Republic)

Vláda found a pigeon sitting on the Hutĕ village green one day, apparently injured, with a bald patch in the neck area.

It was a young bird, he could tell, and had a ring tag, so it must be a homing pigeon.  Vláda put it in a coop up in his loft, which is warm, fed it some grain and left it to recover.  It did, after a couple of days.

That was a fortnight ago.  Since then, the bird has been following Vláda around, obviously associating him with food, and is refusing to go home.  Or it’s too young and doesn’t know its way home, which is perhaps how it came to be on the village green in the first place.

There’d been two other pigeons found on the village green last year.  One died of exhaustion.  Vláda put up a notice on the internet about the second one, and a week later its owner called from Brno (about 100km away) to say it’d arrived home safely.

(Journal) Update, Monday 150811:  This current pigeon was last seen on Friday morning, 120811, so we assume it’s plucked up the courage and gone home.  Perhaps it’s the food on offer here (i.e., not good enough).  Perhaps it’s the constant presence of Tiapka the cat.  (Tiapka means ‘paws’ in Czech, and she is so named because she has two-toed paws.)  I have suggested to Vláda that he check out Tiapka’s tummy contents but he prefers to think the pigeon’s checked out of Hotel Hutĕ.

(Journal) Update, Wednesday 170811:  Vláda says he’d gone to the trouble of getting hold of the contact number for the pigeon fanciers’ association, to whom he gave the pigeon's ring tag number, and they tracked down the owner.  Vláda then got in touch with the owner, who suggested Vláda drive the bird to a place nearer his house, then release it for it to fly home on its own.  Maybe the bird got wind of this, which is why it suddenly disappeared from Hutĕ—the reason it ran away from home in the first place was it didn't like it there, and now Vláda had actually traced its owner and was going to deliver it home (well, part of the way anyway).  Vláda also said that for the whole of the fortnight in Hutĕ, the bird had never uttered a single sound, but on the morning it disappeared, it sat on the eaves and cooed at Vláda.  We both think it was saying goodbye.

See also:  The homing cat:  https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2011/11/homing-cat-that-refuses-to-go-to-his.html 

The unconventional passenger (Czech Republic)

Jana’s mother, who lives some 25km away from Hutĕ, Vláda and Jana’s tiny village of eight households, is 80 but is up with the sun and off into the woods to forage — for mainly blueberries and mushrooms at this time of the year — on her 50cc moped.

On one of my visits, Vláda said one day, “Fancy walking down to the junction to meet the bus from Prague [120km away]?”  The junction is 1.3km’s walk away, down a road that might see half a dozen cars a day if it was lucky, and past some ponds and houses — all with their own vegetable plots and flower beds, the Czechs being keen garden tenders.  At the junction stands a cherry tree barely taller than I, yet bears more fruit than I can eat in one waiting.

The bus approached, slowed down and came to a halt.  We walked up to the passenger door as it opened.  I was expecting a visitor.  Instead, there was a basket of blueberries sitting on the floor right by the driver, which he then proceeded to hand over to Vláda.  Since then, Vláda would call that junction The Blueberry Junction as a point of reference for non-Czech-speaking me.

Apparently this has been the arrangement for the last ten years since Vláda and Jana moved full time to Hutĕ, a village of six terraced houses and one big house that were home to the workers and the manager of the glass factory nearby.   That was more than 100 years ago now, back in the days of the 19th century, before the glass industry in the area went into decline around 1850s–1900s when they ran out of trees to burn for their furnaces, Vláda said. 

Jana’s mother would fill her baskets by 8am, then flag down the long-distance bus from Prague and persuade the driver to take them — often filled with blueberries or mushrooms, but sometimes potatoes or apples from her own garden, and even occasionally complete with pastry ready-made (by her) for Jana to pop straight into the oven to make an apple pie.  

Bags are charged additionally on long-distance buses here in the Czech Republic, but this is the first time I’ve heard of a basket of fruit travelling alone — regularly.

(Czech Republic, 2011)

Circumstantial evidence (Czech Republic)

The Red Currants next door in the tiny village of Hutĕ are in their 70s.  He's a wizened little chappie, just scraping in at 5ft (or 1.52m), but is very fit—goes cycling annually around the Czech Republic with his four siblings, the youngest of whom is a sister at 65.

On that particular day, Mr Red Currant* had gone up to Prague for the day and was not due back until 10pm at the earliest.  I nipped over to his house to give his wife her second massage, but in spite of knocking on the door and calling out "Ahoj!" (pronounced "ahoy"—Czech for "hello") several times, each time waiting in between for a response, nobody came to the door.  

I was turning away after the 4th or 5th time when the door was opened by Mrs Red Currant who gestured me into the living room, which is at the back of the house through the kitchen, where, to my surprise, I found Mr Red Currant.  But he wasn't due back until 10pm and it was only 6:30pm!  And he was in the middle of doing up his trousers.  Had I interrupted something??!!

Just as I was wondering if I should go, Mr Red Currant piped up, "My wife is very satisfied."  Oh dear.  I didn't know him well enough for this sort of confession.  I don't even talk to my sisters or female friends about such delicate matters.  He went on, "My wife's very satisfied with your first massage.  Her back is so much better now." 

Looking back, I think now that he'd just got in from Prague and was changing out of his outdoor clothes into his at-home clothes.

(Czech Republic, August 2010)


*I call him Mr Red Currant because I'd once helped him pick redcurrants for his wife's cake, his Czech surname being less manageable for me.