PEANUTS

Fennie Dove After Hawk Attack

‘PEACE MISSIONS!  Bloody peace missions!  They are to doves what jury service is to people: sometimes interesting, but always a bloody nuisance.  People think they’re simple: fly to so-and-so, pick up an olive branch, on to the war zone, deposit the branch, fly home.  Easy-peasy!  You pick up a whole shedload of karma points and an extra helping of peanuts. Even a medal if you’re really lucky. After all it’s what you’re made for, isn’t it? Elephants roll logs, doves fly peace missions.

‘Well, there I was: called up. “Fly here,” they said. “Where?” I said. “There,” they said.  “Blimey,” I said, “that’s a long way! Dangerous, too.”  “If you’d rather not, Fennie,........” they said. “If you’re feeling off colour......”

‘Of course I’d bloody well rather not! But you’d never live with yourself, would you, after that?  I mean that’s your self-respect gone for a Burton.  Yellow? You might as well be a canary!  So ‘OK,’ I said.  They gave me a big bowl of peanuts and told me to take an early night.  It’s lonely work flying peace missions; like reconnaissance, you always fly alone. In the cold and lonely sky.  Best not to start long books.

‘Crack of dawn next day I’m off, out of the loft and flying high over the fields.  I climb as high as I can for there’s always the risk of some crackpot shooter. What is it about boys with guns? I’m a dove, fella.  But I always say that if you see even the flash of a man before you get properly upstairs, then dive.  Dive!  Shooters always expect birds to climb, you see. So if you dive they fire over the top of you. Dive and the worst you’ll get is an outfield pellet through one of your primaries. Might twinge a bit if it hits the spline, but you’ll be OK. If you’re lucky someone will imp it out for you.

‘I got a pellet up the bum once. That was painful I can tell you.  Thankfully,  just the one. Almost out of range; lodged under the skin. Still there, too.  I get a tweak sometimes sitting on a nest. And another thing, if you do get hit, keep flying, that’s the rule: there’s probably a dog on the ground.

‘Where was I? Oh, yes!  Peace missions.  Well, we don’t set out with our olive branches, not that we have too many olive branches here anyway.  Fortunately, most wars these days seem to occur where they grow olives - have you noticed? Funny that. My solution to the problems in the Middle East - cut down the olive trees!  Ha-ha! No? My little joke!

‘So you fly down to the war zone in the morning, sneak into an olive grove,  all the while watching for trainee belligerents with their 12 bores, pick up a likely branch and then follow your nose fast and low towards the smell of cordite, hedgehopping all the way.  You find some dusty market square in the middle of the tanks and artillery, leave your olive calling card, and get the hell out even faster than you came in, praying that no-one has time to take a bead on you. If you hear a gun, then corkscrew, corkscrew!  Who cares about a few bashed wing tips? The only good thing about a war zone is that most people don’t use shotguns.

‘I know you want to get upstairs to safety as fast as possible but until you make 3,000 feet you’re just a target and a dove hit by a piece of 37mm shrapnel just isn’t a pretty sight.  So fly low through the lanes and alleys. If you’re cornered dodge into a building, there’s always a way out the back.  It’s only when you can’t hear the guns anymore that you pull back on the old stick and reach for the safety of clouds.

‘Well, I made it that time - or I wouldn’t be here now.  And they told me later I’d scored a bullseye. Cease-fire, exchange of prisoners, amnesties, peace treaties - the lot.  Not a bad day’s work for one little dove and a bag of peanuts.  They gave me a medal,  too. I’m proud of that.

‘But I won’t be flying any more missions. No more olive branches for me!  Ha! Wounded coming home, you see.  I tell you: never, ever, get demob happy.  Never relax your concentration, not for one millisecond.  I relaxed for a minute or two and I paid the price.  Right on the bloody doorstep!  ‘There I was, high in the sky, dreaming of a little nest of sticks and a couple of eggs under me and the gangly, squawky squabs hatching -  it’s about all I’m good for these days, but it’s remarkable how peaceful just sitting on a nest can be.  You can even feel the vibrations of the squabs inside the eggs, did you know? That’s real peace for you. That’s when you feel the sun on your back.

‘Sun on your back!  I’ve told you it was a long way.  Well, I’d been flying all day. Used up more adrenaline than an entire football team and I was tired as only a bird that has flown through a war zone can be.  That’s bloody tired, I can tell you.  I thought at first I wouldn’t get home and would have to put down in someone’s garden and beg for crusts, hoping they would have the sense to read the rings on my legs and make a telephone call. That’s an indignity, I can tell you, having your rings read.  But luckily the wind must have been behind me, I looked down and suddenly there was home: the river and the railway line and the two ‘L’ shaped roofs of the cote. Never have moss-clad tiles looked so good.

‘Now, normally, I would do a circuit to check all’s well, but I just wanted to get on the ground and fill my crop with peanuts.  Some cool water from the bird bath wouldn’t go amiss either, I thought to myself.  So, like a fool, I just dropped, didn’t I?  Wiggly-waggly, swish-swish, falling through the air - a disgrace to the whole avian persuasion; but after facing 37mm artillery who cares? I came in from the west with the late afternoon sun behind me....

‘I must have been about two hundred feet when zoom - thunk!  Suddenly, my neck was on fire, I had a searing pain around the clavicle, port wing suddenly useless.  Hawk!  Bloody, bastard hawk.

‘I thought my time had come: it had me fast in its talons and we were hurtling to earth.  All that successful artillery dodging and now this.  I was a goner.

‘The ground was rushing up, the air shrieking past. The hawk had been diving when he took me,  from above and straight out of the sun.  In seconds we would hit the deck.

‘But then a miracle: because I’d been side-slipping, wishy-washing, the hawk hadn’t been able to make a clean strike.  The way he had hold meant that I was tipping him forward, making him dive more.  He couldn’t straighten up.  He couldn’t pull out of the dive. In another second he would take us both into the ground.  He just couldn’t get his tail down, you see. If nothing else he would break his legs. “Good!” I thought.

‘“Let me go,” I yelled, but he just clung on, talons digging deeper.  His great black wings were desperately clawing the air, but at that angle they simply wouldn’t bite. If I was a goner, then so was he. The ground must have been feet away, when at last and with a great squawk of rage, he dropped me. I hit the floor and bounced. 

‘He got his tail down then but so great was his downward momentum that his feathers brushed me on the ground as he flattened out. He shot forward quite out of control. Well, every story has its funny side. Out of control? The hawk flew thwack into a great bunch of tall thistles.  He crashed through them, of course, big heavy bird that he was, but the prickles must have hurt.

‘I could see him climbing lazily away as I lay on the grass, the breath knocked out of me.  He’d be round again in an instant. Could I move before he came back? I had blood running down my neck. My port wing dragged, the muscles in spasm from the hawk’s talons.  I have to say that he’d probably have had me if it hadn’t been for the lovely woman who cares for us coming out of her house at that very moment rattling the peanut tin. Saved! Never has a fortnight’s confinement in the hospital hutch seemed quite such an unalloyed pleasure. 

 ‘Anyway, nice to meet you.  Good luck!  Always best to corkscrew left, what?’



A friend of mine who keeps doves was kind enough to name one of them for me.  A fine strong dove that would fly away during the day and come back at night.  Then one day the dove appeared as you see in the picture - the victim of a hawk strike. Well, I wondered what the dove did during the day and that formed the basis of the story.