Life with Mira

Last evening, Bill took the three younger kids to the local pool. Mira had decided that she wasn't in the mood for a swim, and by coincidence, neither was I. I set to work at the dressing the loom for my latest scarf and she took herself to the back yard. Shortly after I hear a rather excited "Mama!" through the front door. It seems that there was a pigeon in the back yard that could not fly. As Mira said, "He couldn't fly, but, boy could he run" Apparently she chased him all over the yard into the neighbours yard, under their car, and back under the fence into our yard before she finally caught him. So there she is, standing on the front step with a pigeon in her hands. "What do we do?" she asks. Now there is a good question. What DO you do with a pigeon? And a vaguely hurt one at that. "I don't know" I answered. To which she replied "If I were you, I wouldn't know what to do either"
So that left two of us standing on the front steps with a pigeon that couldn't fly. Her concern was that the neighbours cats would get him. A well founded concern as shortly thereafter, Pidge (as we named him) escaped her grasp and fluttered down to the ground where the cats promptly attacked him in a flurry of feathers. Before this act of violence, I was all for letting him go and do his pigeon thing somewhere else. But I really couldn't let him suffer at the hands , or paws as the case may be, of those cats. They are killers. Birds, bats, moles, mice, you name it. Small defenceless creatures are fair game for those two. Bad Kitties.
So the question remains of what to do. To make a long story short, I dug out a couple of milk crates left over from my student days, dumped the contents, threw in a couple of rags (can you say pigeon poo?) and made a quick cage. Pidge was quite calm about the whole thing and to my great surprise never pecked at Mira once. We put in some water, papaya, and a few crackers and put him in the kitchen, away from the front door where the cats were peering in with interest.
He passed a restful night and was flapping about this morning. I suggested to Mira that she take him in to the back yard and see if he had recovered enough to fly. Apparently he had because he flew to the top of the car and then away.
Good luck Pidge.