Flying Blind Through Life: Unie's Story

[Pidgey]

I’d like to introduce you to a completely blind bird that flies on a regular basis. As far as we know, Unie’s story is unique in the world at this writing. When we embarked upon this adventure, we could find no other case of a blind bird that flew, never mind one that used sound to navigate. In this regard, Unie is a pioneer in the purest sense of the word. And when you truly consider the magnitude of her achievement with respect to her species, the height that she has gazed down from is very great indeed.

If Unie could hear and understand this story, she would wonder what all the fuss was about. I expect she’d be disturbed as to why we humans need such inspirational stories so much. Simply put, Unie isn’t some larger-than-life action hero, she just doesn’t know how to quit.

Most people having a brief occasion to watch Unie fly probably wouldn’t be especially impressed. But flying blind has its own inherent difficulties that make it different from being a blind human navigating around the house, yard or city. Air is a fluid medium that rarely sits still. It’s like the difference between swimming in a pool in the dark and swimming in a river in the dark—a river that can flow variously slow and easy or fast and dangerous.

It is funny how well most of us can see and yet, ironically, how blind we can be to the plights of others, how little we appreciate those that share this world, this life with us. It is in entangling our lives with others that we learn to love, in loving that we learn to give and in giving that we truly learn to live, for the vaunted “meaning of life” is ultimately what we will all make of it together.

Her name on the Hatch Certificate is E Pluribus Unum, Latin for “Out of the many--One.” Her mother, Winter, had an affair with a married cock. The first egg that she laid, she left in the middle of the floor. The second, she carefully placed off to the side and began sitting. I suppose that she wished that the father would bear his rightful share of the chick’s rearing, but it didn’t happen. If it hadn’t been early summer, I rather doubt that it would have worked. I never knew for certain which cock was actually the father but he’s one of two brothers.

The blessed event finally arrived and she began caring for the chick as a single parent. There was another family living not far away, the father of which had a mean disposition. When Unie was just a couple of days old, I came up to the loft and found her mother terribly upset because something had happened to her chick. I searched around and finally found her, upside down in the dust with holes punched all over her. Her crop was punctured and one of her toes was ripped off. She was cold and almost comatose.

The sane thing to do would have been to allow her to finish dying, wouldn’t it? Fortunately for her, I am not a sane man. I took her inside and cleaned her wounds under warm running water. The warmth brought her back to the land of the living at the same time that it washed the embedded filth from her broken body. Food leaked from the hole in her crop as the water flowed over the hole.

There was nothing for it but to keep her in a sterile environment so I put her in the Pigeonator (an incubator that I built with very fine temperature control) and only took her out to her mom for meals. Nestled in a clean towel, we settled into our routine. She got fed as many times a day as I could get her out there—usually four or five.

By keeping her crop wound dry, it slowly healed over the next week and a half. Every time that I got it wet to clean it, it would start leaking again. The other wounds on her body healed within a week for the most part. One of the holes was right on top of her head and I worried about her eye underneath.

At the proper time, her eyes began to open and within a few days both were open fully. They seemed fine and she could see just fine—she’d bob up and down, peeping with delight when I took her to her mother. Her mother and I had an understanding—I would herd her over to her nest and she would feed Unie while I sat near. When Unie fell over, I would right her as her mother patiently stood by. Her mother had accepted me as sharing the chick’s upbringing. She knew she wasn’t going to get any help anywhere else, I expect.

Within a week her left eye gained a slightly milky appearance. She started keeping it more and more closed, as well. And then her eyelids began to swell little by little. I began early on to treat it with Terramycin ointment but after a few days, it didn’t seem to be doing any good at all. She did get a brief exam by a vet but it was too early in its course for us to know what it was leading to.

After the swelling had gotten much worse, I got her a full appointment with the vet. When he forced her swollen eyelids apart to look at the eye, he almost swooned because the orb itself was greatly enlarged and completely white. There was nothing for it but to incise the eye and remove all the contents, leaving the remaining sclera to eventually collapse inward like a flower wilting. Those portions would be removed later, some by the vet and some by me.

Initially, the vet didn’t want to traumatize the optic nerve anymore than necessary because she still had vision in her remaining eye. Also, the eye is very close to the brain so it’s a delicate procedure.

I watched her real closely over the next few days and during the weekend, I didn’t think that she was going to make it. She didn’t respond to her mother for feeding and I didn’t want to tube-feed her at the time because she was so sick. She stood with both eyes closed and I could tell that she was in serious pain.

When the bad spell had passed she didn’t seem to respond to movement. She peeped in the obvious need for food so I took her out to her mother. But she couldn’t find her mother, even though she was sitting right in front of her. Few things in this life have ever broken my heart as that did. To have come so far and endured so much, and now this. It just wasn’t fair.

Birds are extremely visual creatures—their perception of the world around them is mostly through their eyes. Their communication with each other is primarily through gestures. They have a language but it is very limited in its scope as near as we can tell. They simply have very little ability to gain information through other senses and normally there wouldn’t be much reason for them to.

Imagine yourself as a blind bird. You have no hands with which to feel around and your mouth has all the feeling of a fingernail. Most sounds are pure gibberish---about all they provide is loudness and direction. You are cut off from communicating with your own community leaving you painfully alone. About all you can do is hear the other birds making their various grunts, coos and calls to the nest—a call to a nest that you cannot find from a mate that you can’t be sure is yours. Helen Keller had an easier time making meaningful contact than you will.

It’s worse. For us, personal locomotion is primarily by our legs. For birds, it’s actually with their wings. They use their legs only for short distances. That isn’t to say that their legs can’t do the job—pigeons can walk quite far with no trouble at all—it’s just not what they consider their primary means of going places. They WANT to fly “there” wherever “there” is. Up in the air, they are not free from predators, but they both feel and are safer than when they are on the ground. It’s natural for them. And, of course, their homes must be unreachable by the earthbound predators below as they have extremely limited means of protecting themselves.

There is no animal more cut off from its community than a blind flock bird. Bearing that in mind, how a blind bird can fly and why one would want to is the focus of this article.

(Continued)