Wild Food Self Delivers, Again

Part 1
Last year as I was typing away, a collared dove topped itself by flying into the french window next to me, it was a bit of a shock, especially for the bird. My first thought was that I'd have to finish it off; death to me was even newer then, so I steeled myself. However, by the time I got to the bird it was stone dead, floppy neck and everything. I stood a few minutes wondering what to do until the Warner Bros effect hit (seeing wild/living things in one's mind'e eye as a tasty treat, steaming on a grand platter with cheffy paper crowns on feet/ribs) so I put the little corpse in the utility room until it had cooled down and stiffened up and crossed the River Styx from wildlife to free meat. It went into the deep freeze plucked and drawn and finally into a pigeon rillettes dish which was pretty good, lots of pork fat (same source as my first ham) and some lovely warm spices, prob a River Cottage recipe.

As you probably know, pigeons mate for life so while the one was safely frozen, waiting for more to join it (my plumber is a crack shot so we trade red wine for pigeons, or "cushies" as they are called here) the widow/er would sit on the power line outside my kitchen window and gaze (accusingly, I thought) at me from above. I was tempted to have a go at it with the air-gun but it's too built up here.

Part 2
This whole story came to an end yesterday when the greyhound and I turned into our back lane to go home and there, almost immobile on the ground was the second dove. It would have been easy to walk past, despite the dog's interest but as the bird didn't move when we got close I decided to act rather than leave it to be tortured to death by a cat (we have particularly some cruel sadists here). The dog caught hold of it and I wrung its neck, but, as usual with things that have such non-central nervous systems, it didn't seem dead so I had to have another go, and typical Tweedy heavy-handed novice, I pulled its head off entirely this time, surely that means it's dead? But the message still didn't get through to the body for a minute or so. Just like chickens I suppose. Anyway, the greyhound got an early supper, in the lane there is just a scattering of feathers, nothing wasted apart from the crop. The dog loves the ends of the feathers too.