Dodger

By Richard Mousseau

War affects countries, and the lives of residents and messenger pigeons. History is filled with stories of the average, the heroic, and with historical facts believed to be true. Not only were human participants there by choice or by conscription, there were animals conscripted to assist their human benefactors. If given a choice would they believe in a cause and volunteer? What about the common pigeon, the birds of flight that delivered messages across the battle fields. For every successful messenger there were countless ones that fell under the barrage of enemy fire. Who protected the messenger pigeons? Meet Dodger, a breed of pigeon adept at tumbling, rolling, and the majestic art of aerial displays for entertainment. Tumblers were not messengers or racers, yet they held their part in the protection of messengers, acting as rescuers, and diversions to protect the messengers from harm. Meet, Johnathon ‘Dodger’ Wentworth-Tumbler, a First World War Rescue Pigeon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Moose Hide Books imprint of Moose Enterprise Publishing
• Release date: Jan 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9781927393499

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Dodger

DODGER

DODGER

By

RICHARD MOUSSEAU

MOOSE HIDE BOOKS

imprint of

MOOSE ENTERPRISE PUBLISHING

PRINCE TOWNSHIP

ONTARIO, CANADA

cover illustration by Rick Mousseau

Dodger

By

Richard Mousseau

Copyright September 14, 1016

Published December 1, 2017

by

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MOOSE ENTERPRISE PUBLISHING

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ONTARIO, CANADA

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THIS BOOK IS A WORK OF FICTION, NAMES, CHARACTERS, PLACES AND INCIDENTS ARE EITHER PRODUCTS OF THE AUTHOR’S IMAGINATION OR ARE USED FICTITIOUSLY. ANY RESEMBLANCE TO ACTUAL EVENTS OR LOCALES OR PERSONS, LIVING OR DECEASED, IS ENTIRELY COINCIDENTAL.

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CREATED IN CANADA

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Mousseau, Richard E., author

Dodger / Richard Mousseau.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-927393-48-2 (softcover).—ISBN 978-1-927393-49-9 (PDF)

I.Title.

PS8576.O977D63 2017C813’.54C2017-905956-4

C2017-905957-2

DODGER

PROLOGUE

Warm air delivered north, care of the Gulf Stream, brought clear skies over Salisbury Plain. The freedom of flight filled the heavens as flocks of pigeon breeds vied for air space. Leisure flights had intensified into training exercises in preparation for an upcoming race. A hundred-mile direct, timed, race would determine the summer’s champion. Coop bragging rights were at stake along with bets placed on rival participants. Current odds were even on the top contenders. At this moment, there were no longshot contenders. No one pigeon had shown up-and-coming talent during the summer season. If so, the unknown flyer was waiting for a ten-to-one odd’s span before making a dash into the winner’s circle, along with gaining a prosperous payout.

Weather entering the month of August, nineteen-hundred and fourteen, seemed to possess bright colours. Gone was the drab of the eighteen-hundreds, and the dull browns and greys of the landscape. The modern age had arrived with growing hope, accompanied by a landscape of darker green and bright hues among flowers. The Salisbury Plain of southern England welcomed the unusual clear days. Common rains that developed because of the warm Gulf air and the cold northern streams mixing over the island domain of England held off during the summer racing season.

Residents of Larkhill were in a gaiety mood while readying for festivities during the conclusion of the year end championship race. Larkhill’s various coops busied themselves; primping, preparing speeches, rehearsing to provide entertainment, while suggesting expected arrival times of their racers. After today’s training flights, the top racers would be shipped a hundred miles away to be individually released and timed until landing at their home coop in Larkhill.

Wentworth Coop expected to repeat a win accomplished the year before. Rocky Wentworth-Rock outdid himself last year with a time of three hours-one minute. Young Johnathon was just born this spring and had just tested fledgling wings. For a youngster, barely able to navigate from the nest to the loft’s open entrance, his awkward grasp of feet onto the landing was embarrassing. Once at the landing and able to view the vast openness of the sky, Johnathon was impressed by the circling flyers.

ONE

From the coop landing, Johnathon’s eyes scanned the community. Impressed he was of the vastness of the main courtyard banked by a semi-arc of individual coops. Having succeeded in graduating lessons of speech, reading and respectful manners within the coop, his curiosity would now expand to the outside world. Most of the required growth of feathers had occurred, though some baby bird fuzz remained on his head. Father said that the fuzz would soon disappear and that the beak nodes would develop when Johnathon matured . . ., by the end of the summer. What the fledgling wanted was his beak to shorten. He felt embarrassed, for other fledglings had already developed adult beaks. As children will be, they teased him about having to continue to feed from his mother.

Today, he was on the coop landing with other coop residents watching the racers circling high above. No longer was he restricted to the inside security, and Mother had said that tomorrow she would show him how to peck grain in the courtyard. Though today, he was to be just an observer, and observe he did. Wide eyes darted to every coop, every pigeon resident, and every detail of the outside world.

Johnathon had thought that the world encompassed the inside of his birth coop. All residents of this coop were similar in mannerism and shape. Mother’s lessons of genealogy encompassed the lineage of their family and of the coop breed. Mother’s pedigree line was from the Birmingham Roller, and Father’s from the Long-face Berkshire Tumbler.

Every pigeon in this coop was in the entertainment business. All, Rollers and Tumblers; circus pigeons, acrobats, and a few comedians. Charlie and Buster entertained with their high-wire act. They were a constant source of entertainment for all in the coop, especially the fledglings peeking out of family nest-boxes. They must have been real old for they did not fly much, preferring to sit side by side on the high-wires passing through the coop.

Charlie’s dark black feathers were sparse and frayed; his eyes dark, wide and full of mischief. In contrast, Buster had a dead-pan stare and a mop of head feathers flattened into a wide hat brim shape. When one moved, the other was bothered; the wire would bounce, talons would slip off the wire, then they would tumble off and bounce on another wire, hang upside down followed by prat-falls and slapstick farce.

While the racers were out of sight on a wide swing over the country side, Charlie and Buster took centre stage. On a high-wire crossing the courtyard, they raced from one side to the other. Charlie’s oversized talons tangled and down he went, flat-faced onto the wire. Instantly, Buster raced over Charlie, only to be leg hooked by Charlie. Upside down on the wire, Buster continued to walk one talon at a time. Above, Charlie continued unaware that Buster was imitating Charlie in mirror action. Every motion, every mannerism captured in instant reflection.

Crowd laughter echoed across the green-grassed courtyard. Charlie and Buster had not lost their fans. In mid step, Charlie froze, a talon raised above the wire; Buster likewise below. Charlie stomped sending Buster tumbling . . . tumbling . . . and bouncing off and up from a lower wire. Up he went to hit and grasp the wire. Now it was Charlie bouncing up, yet his legs, talons and spread wings froze in extended pose. Buster gained an upright position in time for Charlie to land backwards onto buster’s back. To the laughter and acclamations from the crowd, Buster and Charlie waddled comically to the opposite end of the wire, just as the racers made an entrance over the courtyard.

Leading the way, though not by an exaggerated distance, Rocky Wentworth-Rock banked with fixed wing, as if coasting. Rocky liked to win races, but when racing with the home gang, he did not show off or take a wide lead. After all, he was the trainer, the coach and he wished for all racers of the Wentworth Aviary to be winners.

From the Rock pigeon lineage, Rocky Wentworth-Rock struck an impressive pose; his dark plumage highlighted by blue-black head dress with one long feather with a white tip extending from the back nape of the head. Rocky noted that the single feather was a genetic trait passed on from his mother who was a Nun pigeon. This one trait was all that Rocky retained from his mother; all racing talent and stature came from his father and his father’s father; all Rock pigeon racers, winners with registered papers.

A rush of tail wind brushed Johnathon’s fresh face as the flock dipped and then rose over the coops to make another circle. There was a rush of excitement trickling through Johnathon’s body. He stood taller and a twinge enticed wings to stretch. Self-consciously the young lad drew in wings and casually glanced around. ‘Whooeee, no one is looking,’ he thought to himself. He knew that this was not the moment to fly the coop; he would wait to be guided by Mother tomorrow. For now, he would observe the surroundings. Without gawking, wide eyes inspected the various coops on the Wentworth settlement. The sign above this Aviary said, ‘Tumblers-Rollers Entertainers’. Johnathon’s home stood first within the semi-circle of buildings; next was the, ‘Fancy Show’ Aviary.

It only took a glance to notice that the Fancy Show pigeons were different, for they spanned the gamut of fluffy, long feathered, puffy, preened and aloft. Well, they had to be, for they were show pigeons, bred for their stature of beauty. Mother said they were just normal pigeons everyday; only when in shows were they aloft. They sure must be, concluded Johnathon, because of the multiple ribbons, metals and trophy’s decorating the building’s front wall.

‘That one ain`t no Fancy-Show pigeon,’ thought Johnathon, eyeing a young female squab. ‘Down-right ugly.’

In comparison to the young squab’s mother, she was skinny, without fluffy feathers, and her head and legs were naked. As soon as the girl glanced his way, Johnathon averted eyes. A strange increase of warmth flushed facial features. Inspecting the various buildings with concentration eliminated the strange feelings.

Each of the five Aviaries were identical, except for painted-on colours and plaque names. Standing tall as twenty pigeons stacked on each others’ shoulders, the buildings were just as wide and long. A long ledge on the front of openings was the entrance below the sloped roof. Johnathon did not apricate the multi colour montage on the Entertainer’s Aviary. It resembled splashes, dots and an spastic application of mix-matched rainbow colours. Now, he did like the spotless white of the ‘Fancy Show’ Aviary and the sweeping ribbons of colour upon a blue base coat on the ‘Racer’s’ Aviary. The ribbon seemed to be the blur of racers flashing across the sky.

Though Johnathon held an attachment to Mother and Father, the lure of the Racer’s Aviary, and the flash and aerial speed that the Wentworth-Rock racers displayed in dominating the art of flight, he wished to live two buildings down. He made a mental note to ask Father how one becomes a racer, and if he could move to the racer’s coop.

Second from last stood a brown building with strange symbols on the walls, tassels, chimes and bells hanging from perches. ‘World Exotics’ stated the sign, with each letter painted a different colour of the rainbow. In Johnathon’s eyes those residents were as exotic as the homelands they came from. Why they would migrate from; Thailand, Australia, India, Russia, Africa and warmer climates than England, Johnathon could not understand. He, himself experienced trouble learning and speaking the English language; the exotics must find it most difficult. Some evenings on clear nights, the multiple dialects from the Exotics filling the air waves was musical in a conflicting manner.

There was an exotic that Johnathon had met, an acquaintance of Father’s. Dundee was from Australia, though he looked like a basic Rock pigeon breed, he did have long feathers on his legs and talons. When Johnathon asked if he ever tripped over the feathers, Dundee responded, ‘Craggy mate, be hinder when billy-boggin, but bute-fair-show when me fly. Eye-candee for the birdies.’ Sounded like English to Johnathon, though he had no idea what Dundee meant. All the squab knew was that Dundee often visited and was sweet on Mother’s single sister, Aunt Pipi.

From high in the light blue sky, seemingly above the clouds, the racers were mire dots, then plunging straight down they spiraled towards the earth. Heads stretched forward; wings stretched back, legs were buried beneath feathers and tail feathers guided their projector downward. Johnathon held a breath as he buried his head into shoulders. A worried eye noticed the Fancy Show squab doing the same. Abruptly he stretched out his neck, though still fearful that the racers would crash.

Directly toward the red painted ‘Rest Home’ Aviary the racers headed. On command from Rocky, all swooped past the elderly pigeons resting on the entrance ledge. Feathers fluttered; heads turned, eyes blinked, yet not one elder budged, as if they had not noticed the show-off flight path.

In unison, heads pulled back; wings cupped forwards as tails dipped down and forward, and talons spread wide for a match landing on the centre courtyard. The Wentworth community cheered and applauded the racers. While Johnathon joined in on the praise, he cast an eye to Grandpa Wentworth-Tumbler over at the ‘Rest Home’. Grandpa’s head stretched forward, and dark eyes widened. Johnathon wondered if Grandpa ever had dreams of being a racer instead of an aerial tumbler.

TWO

Being the son of seasoned entertainers, there is an unwritten expectation that any offspring would naturally be an entertainer. After all, the Roller-Tumbler breed has a long history of aerial acrobat ability. Talent is genetically passed on. Bending a head towards the ugly girl squab at the ‘Fancy Show’ coop, Johnathon thought, ‘Genetics must sometimes forget to be passed down. She sure don’t have no fancy . . ., her legs are naked. Ug . . . ly! Maybe the Tumbler-Roller genetics missed me. May . . . be, I am a racer. The next champion flyer?’

Johnathon had been staring too long at the young squab, for she had noticed and was waving . . ., directly at him. Eyes bobbed left, right, up, down, then in circles, then pretending to be accosted by the bright sun. He shielded his eyes with a wing. Before turning away, his eye caught the disappointment and resentful action of the squab. The young squab hen buried her beak into throat feathers, and scornfully placed wings on hips. Johnathon would forever retain the image of the squab’s blinking eyes.

Johnathon, Mother said, a wing pulling the boy’s wing down. The sun is behind the aviaries. Now wave to the young girl. That is Miss. Maggie-May.

She, she . . . is . . . is . . ., Mom she looks pretty scrawny.

You are not the display of a Prince Charming. Mother’s scorning eyes burnt gilt into the young son.

She is almost naked!

All squabs . . ., even you are not perfection. Your prickly-baby feathers have yet to be replaced.

Almost, all out . . ., almost all full feathers, indicated Johnathon, smoothing squiggling pin feathers down with a combing wing.

Mother’s head tilted down and eyes informed Johnathon to stop talking. "Maggie-May will . . ., in