Joe the pigeon would like a word…

Free the pigeons!

On boxing day 2020 a pigeon was found in a backyard. In Australia. Nothing unusual about that, I hear you thinking. But it was found with a band around its leg. And the band apparently suggested that it was from the USA. The pigeon I mean, not the band.

I don’t know how the band suggested this. Maybe the band had ‘USA’ emblazoned vertically. Like they do on the space rockets. In which case it was a good job it’s leg wasn’t snaffled up in a Mars Bar wrapping. Unless of course the band was playing a tune at the time. Yankee Doodle Dandy maybe?

Now obviously, everybody knows that you can’t have foreign pigeons in Australia. Not even American pigeons. Especially not at the height of a pandemic. Not even American people in fact. All the airports are shut. But pigeons have no need of airports! They do say however that pigeons are flying rats.

Flying American rats. In Australia! How awful. The pigeon must have suffered terribly.

Imagine flying all the way from the USA to Aussieland. All under your own steam. All those wonderful little island paradises strung across the Pacific ocean. Any one of them you could stop off on and peck at a hula hula girl.

Or you could stop off on all of them. One after another. Each one presenting a real temptation to just call it a day and stay there. But for some reason you keep deciding to keep going. To the next one. And the next one. And the next one. Until eventually you get to Aus. Talk about overplaying your hand! Maybe not a very bright pigeon. Or maybe just not a very good day. Maybe it’s all the fault of a gust of wind.

Or maybe I am being unfair. Maybe the pigeon’s journey was involuntary. Maybe it had been caught in the Capital of Cool USA. For fouling someone’s bald pate perhaps. Then sentenced to be banished to Australia. Such cruel things have happened.

Or maybe it pinched my chips. In which case it would have been a very fair punishment. Except that I wasn’t in America at the time. Lucky pigeon.

What puzzles me greatly is: why was it found in a back yard in Australia? There might be, let us suppose, lots of good reasons to go all the way to Australia. But I would not imagine that seeing the back yards is usually one of them.

Oh no. Not back yards. Beaches. Sun. Surf. Dive bombing sunbathers. That’s what a pigeon would go to Australia to do. Common pigeon sense really. Back yards indeed.

Still, there must self evidently be absolutely zero tolerance for flying American rats in Australia. So naturally the full panoply of the Aussie military and civil defence swung into action to protect the country from this insidious threat to the Aussie way of life.

You can imagine the scene. Petitions being got up. Marches held. Demos. Riots. Death to the American pigeon! In due course countered naturally by Pigeon Lives Matter! and Make Australia Pigeony Again! All as befits a healthy Aussie democracy.

And then again…somebody in authority eventually took another look at the pigeon’s band. A closer look. It was fake! It was not an American pigeon at all! It was home grown Aussie all along!

Of course the pigeon could have told you that. But that’s the trouble. Nobody ever listens to pigeons. Its terribly speciesist.

But my goodness me what a relief! So the Aussie army, navy, air force, police, fire brigade, coast guard, flying doctor, local health officials and all their ‘partnering’ agencies could all stand down! Panic over!

Naturally lessons must be learned. A commission of enquiry must be set up, comprising the great and the good. To ensure it will never happen again.

Eventually the enquiry will publish its report: It was all very unfortunate. But lessons have been learned. Procedures have been tightened.

And by the time the report gets published it’ll have been 20 years ago. So everyone involved will be dead anyway.

So all’s well that ends well.