3D MIKE AND THE MANGLED PIGEON

MONDAY, 10.15am

Yonder my window, a pigeon is trapped and dying. On the roof top of the adjacent buildings extension, it has somehow managed to get its body entangled in mesh netting.

The roof slate beneath scratched and filthy with diarrhea, the tortured creature has been stuck snared to the spot for what must be days, the fight long since left its little body. Malnourished and marked, head flopped listlessly, life draining out in agonizing starvation, time is running out.

Mike McCarthy, aka 3D Mike, watches pensively from the Flame One window. On Mike’s watch, such injustice cannot stand. But the bird is too far to reach. Someone must get to it, and fast.

Mobilizing the troops, Mike enlists the aid of Hospitality department head and Eastern European glamour model Jennifer Hinde, and Screen Scene’s sensitive warrior poet and boy next door pin up, yours truly, Keith George Michael Jordan.

Exploding into 32 Upper Mount street like angelic animal life savers possessed, we race to the upstairs bathroom overlooking the mesh prison that holds our fast fading columbidae.

Without a moment’s notice, Mike flings his deceptively agile body out the bathroom window, three point landing on the rickety rooftop like an Olympic gymnast. Jenny gasps adorably as I look on in awe.

“Get me a knife! Mike wails in a take charge tone that fills me with admiration and confused feelings. “There’s no time!”

Jenny bolts from the room in a flurry of hair and sweet smelling perfume. Mike crouches next to the panicked pigeon and whispers calming words in its minute ear drum . “It’s okay,” I hear him say, “It’s not your fault.”

Without a second to spare, I scrape the fast forming tears from my eyes before Jenny reappears, steak knife in hand.

Mike tip toes up to the window and snatches the blade in a hurricane of flesh and fury, swopping down to the mesh netting and setting to work.

Much to my surprise and delight, he doesn’t mercy stab the pigeon to death as I had originally expected him to, but instead sets about cutting it free from its bonds in an act of pure genius and heart warming kindness.

Perched over a sheer, violent drop of gravitational insanity, the implacable Mike slices the pigeon loose and cradles him in his arms. The pigeon weakly raises its head, a single tear streaming down its feather flecked face. A moment of recognition between two disparate species of the animal kingdom. A thank you.

“Water! Bread!” Mike hollers as he sets the freed piece of fluttering frailty down lightly. Jenny rushes off again to secure the supplies, giving me ample time to stifle a womanly sob.

A cup of water and two slices of bread (white and brown) are quickly passed out to our God like liberator. Seeing the bird fed and watered, Mike bids his new friend a fond good bye, then high jumps back into the bathroom to wash his hands in the sink. Overcome by the events that have just unfolded before our eyes, Jennifer Hinde and I are left with little choice but to hold each other for several stunned minutes after he has left.

One of the more amazing, hope inspiring things I have seen of a Monday morning here at sunny Screen Scene.

Good work, Mike!