I let my pigeon go at a Cork city park - where is he now?

I am pure nosey, it’s a talent I have perfected over the years.

So, needless to say, I just couldn’t wait to get to see the new-look Bishop Lucey Park in Cork city to see what all the fuss was about.

The many negative remarks weren’t my only interest, however. Because I am invested emotionally in this little space as my offspring left home to live there many years ago.

This story in itself is an unusual one, even to me, as it was the first and only time in my life that I was a mother - and here comes the twist, I wasn’t just a normal mother, I was surrogate mother to a pigeon.

I didn’t bear the bird on behalf of another, it was handed to me in a box in Waterford city by a lady in a shoe shop.

I still question to this day why I appear to look like a person that can mother a pigeon, and perhaps some day I will speak to a professional about this, but for now I have had to let that itch go unscratched.

At the time of this modern day immaculate conception, I was a Zumba instructor, working nights, and my then fiancé worked during the day, so between us we worked shifts feeding this young feathered fowl.

Online videos and internet articles taught us everything that we needed to know about rearing a pigeon, and much to our shock, we raised the pigeon to be a well-balanced, adult bird.

Me, acting in true mammy style, did not want him to leave home. We named him Pig-E-On, pronounced Piggy-On, and we were a happy little family until the day came when he began to fly.

This would have been fine if we didn’t have eight cats and feared leaving him outdoors, so he flapped around the kitchen leaving loving pigeon deposits everywhere.

In light of this development, we had to come to the difficult decision that involved bringing him back to his tribe.

The painful day came on a wet and windy autumn morning, we tucked Pig-E-On into a cat basket and drove him the two hours back to his ‘real’ family in Waterford city.

Alas, when we got there, due to the awful weather conditions, there was not one pigeon in sight.

We weren’t sure if he would know how to ‘pigeon’ and were reluctant to just leave him there in the rain.

I interviewed and interrogated customer service personnel in cafés regarding the lack of pigeons in the city that day, and I was beginning to look a bit ‘wacky’, so we declared our mission a lost cause and brought our bird home.

Through some enquiries, we discovered that Cork city had a park full to the gills with pigeons and it sounded ‘des res’ for ours.

It was a place in the city centre, close to the English Market, with a library within walking distance and a fancy fountain to dip in!

Convinced this was a fine location, we took the trip to Cork city - you want the best for your kids, right?!

We arrived in Bishop Lucey Park and it was everything we had hoped for and more.

I’m assuming, having never had human children, that the feeling I had that day is the same feeling mothers have after they drop their children off to their accommodation for their first term in college. A mixture of joy and sadness washed over me.

The sadness was winning after we left Pig-E-On out of his basket and he flew straight onto my shoulder. I decided that he wanted to come home, but my fiancé decided otherwise and gently nudged my only ‘child’ off into his new world, amongst many of his own kind

With that, I never saw him again, being unable to distinguish him from the dozens of pigeons that flocked around us.

Needless to say, I cried for a number of days and, as you can probably tell, I have never forgotten about it - nor have I forgiven my then fiancé, now husband.

So, how do I feel about the newly refurbished park that I have such a strong connection to?

Firstly, I noticed a distinct lack of pigeons.

I am not fool enough to assume that Pig-E-On is still alive after all these years, but I could be a grandparent! Laugh if you will!

What else did I notice?

Well, I was mortified to interrupt the crows munching into their breakfast, which appeared to be smashed eggs or vomit, I couldn’t tell from the distance I stood at, and I was in no way going to get closer.

Next to catch my attention were the empty cans of beer and vodka bottles scattered all across the ground and grass. The bins were full to capacity and overflowing with coffee cups and the skin of a pineapple - random, I know!

The wonderful fountain had cigarette butts floating around it, a plastic beaker, and some drinking straws.

As I absorbed this visual information, I considered all the negative remarks I have read over the last number of days relaying the public’s disgust for what the council have done to this public space, and I couldn’t help but draw a comparison to my Pig-E-On and his little deposits of fecal matter in my kitchen.

I had to question, is this what we do now?

We don’t like gravel, but we’re just thrilled to bits to destroy an area with rubbish, and then shout in anger for the lack of bio-diversity? Have we no respect for our city?

What do we want from our councils if this is how we choose to treat our public spaces, regardless of the end result or the cost of it?

Never mind what the council did, look at what we’ve done to it in only a matter of days! I don’t know about you but I suspect there is a bigger issue here and it’s most certainly not the lack of grass. What do you think?