Anybody out there ever played hide and seek with a semi-blind pigeon before? You’d think that we, the sighted humans would have the upper hand, however, today Georgie proved us wrong.

Both Georgie and Elmo have free reign over our flat when we’re at home, which both pigeons take advantage of. Georgie usually goes walkabouts once a day, and we normally find her sat in the corner of the kitchen or in the bathroom.

Today, however, after not having seen her for a while we went to look for her in the usual places. Is she in the hallway? No. Bathroom? No. Kitchen? No. Bedroom? No. Hmmm, maybe behind the sofa in the living room? No. … In the bath? No. Bin? No. Laundry basket? No. Etc, etc.

After about an hour of frantic searching (in which we had upturned nearly the whole flat and were calling her name over and over), Richard noticed a pigeon sized hole under the toilet pipe leading behind the tiled bathroom sink. Uh oh. We called her name and listened. No sound. We called again and again. … Then the faint sounds of pigeon footsteps.

Hole under the toilet pipe leading behind the tiled bathroom sink.

15 mins later the bath is in pieces and Richard’s arm is reaching behind the sink. NOW Georgie thinks of cooing… not while we were searching for her; No, that would have made it too easy for us.

The bathroom in pieces!

So we manage to pull her out and Georgie’s none the worst for her experience. Who’d have thought that a semi-blind pigeon could play hide and seek so well?

We, on the other hand, are still a bit shaky. My heart’s still racing but I’m very happy to have my darling Georgie back on my lap.

PS. We’ve just moved into our new flat and we never knew this hole existed!!! It’s now blocked so we don’t have a repeat of this incident.

The pipe Georgie was standing on behind the bathroom sink.

Georgie after being dragged out of her hiding place.