Raymond Briggs

I’ve just indulged myself in the enormous privilege of sitting in the sun in the garden at 12 o’clock in late autumn. Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun!

I was also admonishing myself about the wild animals and birds – another privilege I have here. As I am alone now, there is the danger of coming to regard them as family – my family.

It’s a kind of possessiveness. Look, they are not family at all, let alone your family, twerp. Just because a baby hare happens to sit near you, it doesn’t mean companionship. To him, you are just part of the landscape. As long as you don’t make any sudden movements in his direction, he will regard you as no more significant than the fence.

As for the birds clustering round the feeders, two inches away from your kitchen window, they have never even seen you; so they’re not ‘family’ at all.

Nevertheless, you can’t help feeling for them – particularly the tiny coal tit with one leg missing, who used to furiously beat his wing on the same side as the missing leg to try to keep his balance. He seems to have got over that and appears almost normal, but tends to come to the feeder when the other birds are not there.

Recently, a pair of collared doves seem to have taken up residence, just below the kitchen window; after all, everything they needed was here. A domed birdfeeder which was filled with topquality seed every day; three bird baths always full. So why not settle here?

I don’t suppose the doves were aware of me at all but I might have seemed like a god, living above them in another world, yet controlling all their food and water. Golly, I’ve never thought of myself as a god; or saint perhaps – Santo Ramondo? No thanks; getting a bit too Christmassy.

They seemed to be a pair, though I had no idea which was male or female. But occasionally one would get onto the other’s back. ‘Aha!’ I thought, ‘He’s the male.’ But it could have been teenage doves larking about, or even homosexual doves. I could write a learned piece for a scientific journal entitled Homosexual Collared Doves in Sussex.

Then I started to find small white feathers on the path just under the window. ‘Ah,’ I thought. ‘Someone’s been fighting over the fallen seed.’

But then, later, I saw one of the doves comfortably settled on the feeder, looking quite content, having a doze for several hours. Occasionally, it would wake up and start to groom itself, plucking tiny white feathers from its breast and letting them float down to the path below. It then seemed to sleep for several hours. Was it ill? What could I do?

This went on for several days and I saw them only now and again. Never knew which one it was dozing under the dome. But then the inevitable – one was found dead on the metal lid of the drain cover, its throat ripped open.

I decided to leave it where it was. Over the next five days, it was gradually consumed: eye sockets first as usual, then other bits, day after day, until there was nothing.

Don’t get fond of these creatures! You might as well get fond of one of the clouds. Look! That lovely, little, white one, over there, just above the big, grey one... look.