Who walks past sick and injured animals?

   VegaNation was at a homeopathic conference near King's Cross in London yesterday. During the morning break, we found a sick pigeon in the nearby park. The bird looked dreadful, apathetic, skeletal and weak, and yet everybody else was walking straight past her.

  The middle of a conference, on a rare visit to London, when you don't know anyone, is not the best circumstances under which to find a sick animal. The situation reminded us very much of one of our favourite children's book by Bob Graham 'How to Heal a Broken Wing', in which a little boy and his mother are in London and find a pigeon that needs help. They are completely unprepared,and end up bringing the bird home in the mother's handbag. If you want to take a look at this lovely book, we sell it in VegaNation, our 100% vegan shop at www.veganation.co.uk.
  The bird looked as though she was dying, so we gave her some homeopathic Arnica and water, and put her somewhere quiet, where she would not be disturbed. Throughout the day, she was given more water and Arnica, and meanwhile, we appealed on Twitter for some local help for the bird, but no-one could help. We felt strongly that the bird was probably not going to survive (although the Arnica had stopped the slight nasal bleeding immediately), but at the end of the day she was still alive.
  It just didn't seem right to leave her there under a hedge or something, where a dog might get her, so there was nothing else for it but to empty the conference 'goody bag' and pop her in that, and bring her on the two hour journey home on the train, and then in the car.
  She was still alive when she got home, but seemed slightly chilled, so we made her a hot water bottle, and wrapped it up so it wouldn't be too hot,then tucked it in beside her in a cat basket. We gave her more drops of water and Arnica, and she seemed to be swallowing fairly well although she was weak. We could find no visible injuries and she didn't seem to have any of the dreadful yeasty, fungal throat growths that can incapacitate and then starve a pigeon or dove, so we really didn't know what was wrong with her.
  Racing pigeons are often handed in to animal shelters and vet surgeries, because they are so driven to fly home that they often seem to fly beyond the limits of their own endurance, flying without stopping to eat or drink, until they are weak and exhausted and ill, but this bird was not a racing pigeon.
  In the end, when we went to check the bird again, an hour after we'd last given her a little water, we found that she'd gently slipped away.
  We were very sad and so were the children, especially our youngest who was absolutely distraught, but we'd done everything we could to help her.
  We'll never know what was actually wrong with her; what had brought her so low, or at what point she became too sick to feed herself and began to starve. I wonder whether she could have been saved if someone  had picked her up a few days earlier and I'll always wonder how many thousands of people had walked past her in that park before someone finally took pity on her and brought her sixty miles home to die.