Lost

Florence was lost. The pigeon's coded ankle bracelet included a number of a telephone connection. The pigeon was a long way away from her connection. She thought of the pigeon racing home, a home racing pigeon, becoming disoriented – experiencing no correcting nudges from the inner compass, cut off from the big dipper – blown off course by inclement weather wings beating and beating until their strength was gone flying on and on buffeted by terrible winds until finally seeing a light below and it was her home that had finally drawn the pigeon back down to earth. But the bird gave her a look and there was something in that look, a quizzical raised eyebrow of a look with a side ways tilting of the oily head pecking another piece of corn. Was the bird lost, a victim of the elements? Or had the pigeon taken off? Florence could be a rebel pigeon out on the lam, strutting and bobbing up the sidewalk and pecking up all the free corn she could get. Not a bad scene for a former slave bird, a winged gladiator whose cage was opened in strange places. Property of a sportsman who sent the bird winging with all the ambitious and high powered and well bred of racing pigeon kind. It hit her like a blow to the chest, Florence wasn't lost she had escaped. The bird was here to strut, unencumbered by her genetic inheritance. Like a third generation lawyer in the family the pigeon had seen it all and wanted something else out of life.


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