When the Good Samaritan arrived at my house on Friday night, he had two boxes taped shut with a total of ten pigeons inside. SFACC shelter staff had tried their best to persuade him to bring the birds to them the night before but nothing they said could convince him that they would help rather than kill the pigeons.

When we had spoken on the phone, I had offered to pick up the pigeons he was surrendering but he didn’t trust me either and wanted to see where they were going. I appreciate that concern and wish that more had it. Too often people blithely hand over their birds with very little knowledge of where they are going. But I was not at all happy that ten pigeons, including three sick squeakers squeezed in with angry adults, were in the small, filthy boxes.

And there were more. He had saved 20 King & Carneau pigeons from being killed as poultry and had set loose the other ten at a shopping center parking lot the night before. He had mistakenly assumed that because feral pigeons lived there, that these domestic pigeons would be alright. They weren’t. He realized almost immediately that he had made a mistake when he saw the pigeons being nearly run over by cars.

I quickly settled the seven adult pigeons in one foster cage and the three sick babies in a crate and then we drove to the parking lot to see if we could save any of the birds he had left there the night before.

We found and caught two and a third, with a broken wing, was rescued by one of several volunteers who had also searched to try and rescue these birds but seven are still unaccounted for and have most likely been killed by hawks if not run over.

We were already full up with 100 birds in foster care but these birds needed our help- immeditately. This was 911. And so now we have 113 birds in our care. The new birds include three fledglings- Daisy, Max and Sparrow. A big, old picked-on and sick adult I’ve named George (though I think she’s actually a hen), broke-wing, poor-appetite Hester (currently sitting in my lap after a hand-fed dinner), a pair of Carneaus I call Red Man & Lucy, and the others yet to be named. Each and every one of these birds clings to their aliveness as much as any other being. They are cheering up and getting better. We need foster homes and adopters for them and of course donations to sustain this work.

YOU saved these birds. MickaCoo is a manifestation of your support and involvement.

Thank you. Thank you for saving these innocents.

Elizabeth Young, founder & executive director

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