CogsBlog: one for sorrow

Thursday 3 June 2021

one for sorrow

I have been given a baby magpie that needs to be hand fed as it is so young.

One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told.

She is quite needy as you can see. I have called her Joy.

There has been sorrow though. The rook that had been found down the rabbit hole (last post) that I resisted calling Alice - I named Percy Button. Don't ask me why - I think it had something to do with haberdashery - the cat Pocket being called pocket. I seldom name the rescue birds for attachment reasons. For two months I bathed his closed eye every day and gradually he began walking around but was never able to fly. We all hoped that given time he would be able to because what life is it to be a wild bird that should fly who has to remain in captivity. Then one day for no apparent reason he began to die. He could no longer hobble around but kept falling on his side. I would help him up and he would take a drink of water and even a morsel of cheese (his favourite food) but as the day wore on he grew weaker and finally at five o'clock in the afternoon he died. Sadly and oddly he looked at me and his closed eye had opened, appearing as bright and shiny as the other. Then he closed them both.

Rocket was so sad he had to go to bed.

And here, where Percy Button's inside house was (he had an outdoors house too) is a vase of flowers in his memory. Scout is honouring his memory and you can just see the triangular ear of Pocket like he's in some kind of Jaws scenario at the bottom of the picture. He is just checking that Percy Button isn't hidden round the back of the vase.

Not all rescues end sadly though. The lovely fox I put up on my blog post the time before last who'd had a fight with another male and come off worst was eventually returned to his territory. He came from Bournemouth and was a much loved urban fox. On his return all the locals who had fed him and his families over the years lined the street to cheer him back. He immediately leapt onto the seat of a parked motorbike, triumphant that he had returned to his patch as if he were James Dean in a Rebel without a Cause.

I couldn't resist this photo opportunity of Nancy( my familiar). We had friends stay with us once who had a funny little dog who barked madly at the Black Cat sign but completely ignored Nancy in the flesh.

Pocket says he's exhausted writing all his books, plays and poems.(what poems?) He told me his latest novel had been adapted for television and called The Purrrrrrsuit of Love. I said I thought Nancy Mitford had written that and when did he get himself an agent? He shut his eyes and told me he was opening his own literary agency called The Pocket Book Agency. He ignored me when I suggested I might join it but said in memory of Percy Button he might produce one called The Pocketbook of Birds. I told him that had already been done ........