George, Terry, ember photo

[jbangelfish]

This is an ember Catalonian tumbler OC that is in the mail on the way to me, hopefully tomorrow morning. He also has archangel bronze, smoky and sooty and may carry milky. Useful bird.

Embers vary alot in appearance from what I've seen of them.

Bill

[RodSD]

Wow! That tumbler probably has parents that tumbled with many different colors.

[TAWhatley]

WOW! That is an EXTREMELY beautiful bird! Can't wait to see and hear more about this one! Dang you guys! You've got me hooked on this color, feather patterns, and other stuff. I just used to rescue them .. now I'm looking for unusual ..

Terry

[jbangelfish]

Right now, he's lost in the mail, or delayed actually. He is stuck in St Louis MO and is taking 2 extra days to get here because the PO had no heated flights to Chicago, where he has to go before coming to me. They are now going to ship him by ground. The thing that bothers me the most is that they never called anyone. This is a simple case of people not doing their job and is why people get irritated with any shippers.

Anyway, I hope he's OK and as long as he arrives tomorrow, he should be. This is frustrating. The PO will not put live shipments of any kind on an unheated aircraft. This is just stupid, pigeons can take 30 below as long as they are healthy adults. Better than a two day delay with no food and water. I'm going to talk to PO officials to see if I can get them to rethink this. I had to argue with airlines about this many years ago and when they actually used their little brains to do some thinking, it made sense to them that pigeons would be better off subjected to 30 below than 2 or 3 days without food or water. They live just fine in the midwest where it hit 34 below not too long ago. Sick or weak birds would not fare so well but the healthy ones are fine.

Bill

[g0ldenb0y55]

WOW! I've never seen that color on a pigeon before....very interested to see what you produce with him....keep us posted!

[TAWhatley]

Sure hope he arrives safe and sound, Bill.

Terry

[Margarret]

Bill,

That is a gorgeous bird. I'm hoping he makes it in good shape. You have to wonder what the PO uses for logic. That is a bureaucracy for you. No one wants to make a decision. They just ignore things until there is a tragedy. Then someone either tries to sweep it under the rug, or blame someone else.
It can make you crazy. I know, I worked in one for a fair amount of time.

Margaret

[jbangelfish]

It gets worse. I talked to half a dozen different people in St Louis today and got about 3 different stories. The last one was that the bird left on a flight for Chicago at about noon today. This is two days after it arrived in St Louis.
At least one person told me that it was supposed to have been sent back to the sender when they had no heated flights. Obviously, that didn't happen. I have to call the Rocford PO in a few minutes to see if they got it from Chicago yet. They had a truck come in from Chicago about an hour ago. If it is there, I'll go pick him up tonight, some 20 miles from me but many hours from being delivered here.

My wife works for our local PO and I am always defending her and other postal emplyees because no one who has never done that job has any idea what people go through to get our mail to us on time. Still, there are those who don't care or simply do not do their job as they should. These are the ones who give the PO a bad name. Anyone can make a mistake and they do but this is well beyond a simple mistake by one person. This is a very high level of incompetence. Not much I can do but hope for the best.

He's a very pretty pigeon and somewhat rare, I'd hate for anything to happen to him for many reasons, besides just considering this inhumane.

Bill