Little Sara

Little Sara, this is the story of Lisette and her new friend, the carrier pigeon. I have written it especially for you and I do hope you will like it.[1]

On Monday, the thirty first day of the millennium year 2000, started for all of us, scrabble players (you ask your mummy or your papa what it means), a very busy week. Everyday we had to cross our city of Paris, France, to go and play in a very beautiful building I hope you may visit one day, the “Cité des Sciences” (City of Sciences) where you can learn anything about everything even if you are very young because there is a special place called “La Cité des Enfants” (Children City) which can welcome in different parts children from the age of two or three to the age of twelve. Now that I think about it, I believe you went there with your parents when you came to France a few years ago but you were really to young then and you must have forgotten all about it. Just behind the main structure is the Geode, a huge and bright sphere in which you can watch lots of very interesting three-dimensional movies which have been made all over the world, above the mountains or deep down in the depths of the oceans.

On the occasion of this memorable event, the World Championship of the last year of this millennium, thousands of people came from Europe (from France of course but also from Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Romania, England...), North America (mostly from the French Canadian province of Quebec), Central America (from the French Caribbean Islands of Martinique, Guadeloupe, Saint Martin), Africa (from many countries now independent but which have been once French or Belgian colonies such as Morocco and Tunisia in North Africa and Madagascar, Tchad, Rwanda, Senegal, the Democratic Republic of Congo known formerly under the name of Zaïre...), from the Middle East (from Lebanon where they have a very important club in Beyrouth), from the Far East (from the French Islands of Reunion and New Caledonia but also from Vietnam which was once upon a time a French Colony we unfortunately fought against when it was part of Indochina and whose nationals had forgotten about our language - except for the Vietnamese people who have immigrated to France - but are learning it once more).

If I give you all these details before coming to the beginning of my story, it is to tell you how much I would like you to speak French[2] but it is also for your mummy or your papa to show you on a map where all these countries are. Now let’s go ahead with the story :

When I came back home after a hard day’s work of finding the most interesting words which would help me stay among the good players, I had a few errands to do before going to the kitchen to get my dinner ready. I did not look immediately up to a window casement which is located on the left between the window and the ceiling and which I always leave open but when I did, what did I see behind the pane? the tiny head of a pigeon whose eyes were staring sadly at me. At first I was surprised and did not know what to do. After a while, I called the janitor and as he told me he would come to my apartment, I brought my extension ladder in front of the window pane so that he could climb and see whether the bird was wounded or was just resting on the sill for a while. You know, little Sara, when Noel or one of the other cats did not want to play any more, she would just curled up and sleep with her head warmly laid along her body. Your parrot stays on its perch and may take its nap jut there. A pigeon, like many birds, lays down when it’s tired and its body looks like a feather ball but its small head stays straight with its eyes opening at the slightest sound.

When the janitor had climbed the ladder, he watched the bird and then told me: “it is a carrier pigeon we have here as I can see the ring around its foot. It’s just resting for a while before flying away. Were it wounded, it could not have flown up here.” Now, Sara, let me explain what a carrier pigeon is: it is a bird which is or rather was trained by its master to carry all kinds of news from one place to the other and the place it flew to could be very far away from the pigeon house in which it usually lived. The piece of information was written on a piece of paper which was inserted inside a ring the carrier pigeon wore around one of its feet. Inside the ring was and still is also written the trainer’s name and his home town so that the addressee knows immediately where the bird comes from. Nowadays however, carrier pigeons are trained mostly to enter competitions in which the fastest one to fly from one point to the other is declared the winner.

Why is this ? It is because at the dawn of the third millennium, we have all kinds of media such as telephones, fax machines, the Internet...to carry information very, very fast but once upon a time only horses which had to be replaced very often because they get tired rather quickly and later on carrier pigeons were used to send messages from one place to the other either in peacetime or in wartime when they flew over the enemy lines when necessary (this is rather difficult to understand but once again, your mummy or your papa will explain when you are a little older and tell you that your French great-grandfather saw such military carrier pigeons when he was in the army during First World War).

Let’s come back once more to our own story: after the janitor had told me that our new friend was a tired carrier pigeon, I told him that we were going to give the bird corn flake crumbs as I did not have any bread in the apartment and water so that it could eat and drink before flying away. As soon as we had given it both the corn flakes and the water, the pigeon started first to drink as it must have been very thirsty and to eat the crumbs. I was so happy, little Sara, to have thought of feeding the bird and to see that it was what it needed to get its strength back. We then decided to leave our friend alone so that it could rest a little more. The janitor told me that he would come back two hours later and that if the pigeon was still there, he would take it and untie the ring to learn where it came from. Thus he would be able to call to its trainer in order to ask him what to do with the bird. This is exactly what he did as our friend was still on the casement sill two hours after.

After having looked at the address and at the telephone number, he saw that the bird’s trainer lived in our neighbourhood. He called him immediately and the man said that he was so glad to learn about his bird which had jut flown all the way from a place called Lourdes in the south of France near Spain, 808 kilometres (500 miles) from Paris. He thanked us of course for having fed the bird and told us that if it had not left in the morning as it was better to let him rest during the night, he would come and get it. The janitor left then and as I was also very tired after all these unexpected events, I went myself to bed. As soon as I woke up very early in the morning as I had to be away by 8 a.m. to go to my scrabble competition, I went to the kitchen and as I did not see the small head anymore, I climbed up to the casement sill (I had left the ladder in place just for that purpose) and, little Sara, can you imagine my joy and my relief? The bird was gone and was certainly by then back were it belonged, in its own pigeon house, among all its friends, the other carrier pigeons.

My story ends here because as we say in France “Les gens heureux n’ont pas d’histoire” (you don’t tell stories about happy people). In this case could I say: “you don’t tell stories about happy carrier pigeons”? I know in my heart that you will like hearing “the odyssey of a carrier pigeon” as, alike your mummy and papa, you love all kinds of animals and you like very much going to the zoo. I still remember the time when I went there with you and you were so thrilled to be among the lambs and to stroke them. Aren’t you by the way my own little lamb whom I miss very much as I live so far from San Francisco?

[1] As I said in the French version for children, I wanted this to be more like a fairy tale than a sad story.

[2] Sara is now eight years old and, going to the San Francisco French lycée, she speaks French fluently.