What do you mean my dear kitteh? 'so me' ?
Wasn'ae half fucking funny as shit though. The little bird, sparrow, finch or whatever it was, a sparrow I think, woke up all of a sudden and wasted absolutely not a microsecond in darting out from the sleeve of my trench, where I'd had my arm pulled in a bit so the bird could rest in my just-cupped hand and be warmed by my body heat as it slept off its concussion and, if it hadn't been for me diving off my bike and into the road, a squishing into a long pinkish yellowy grey line of splattered bird entrails and a car tyre with a beak stuck in the treads. Not having that, so scooped up and cradled in my palm it had to be. Not that I minded of course, I'm only too happy to rescue needy wee furry, feathery, scaly critters and keep black (and brown) widow spiders as house pets
But this bird...it woke up really suddenly, I'd expected there to be at least a twitch of activity as it came round so I could keep it up there in my long leather trenchcoat sleeve, but no, it just bolted, coming out of my sleeve like a feathery bullet from a gun, twittering insanely. My doctor...jesus the look on his face...looked like he was about to suffer an imminent heart attack, to say nothing of the expression worn on his face when he realized that there was a tiny wee, damnable hard to catch little bird zooming around his surgery office as if it were a flying golf ball whacked with what should have been a 500 yard driver shot, only confined to a public toilet-sized little box of a room, squeaking and chirping for all it was worth.
Took both of us to catch the little feathery bugger and gently return it to the confines of my jacket, this time, gently tucked into my inside pocket, and took quite some time as well. The other waiting patients must have wondered what in hell was taking so long, for what should be a 10-minute appt give or take according to need, but that must have taken a bit short of an hour, give or take a few tens of minutes that had to be spent in rounding up one jacked up, crazed sparrow that was busy acting as if it had just been woken up with a shot of IV personal stash quality whizz and a large bowl full of espresso black coffee. For such a small bird, that just recovered from being stunned senseless it was awfully full of energy. I actually reckon we were more or less just waiting for it to tire itself out before we could catch the blighter.
Wish you had been there to see that, you'd have almost wet yourself with laughter at the sight of the look on my doc's face. Flustered doesn't even come close to describing what he was that day. And kinda pissed at first, although he did forgive me, since he knew I was doing what I not only had to do for the bird, but what comes naturally on instinct when I encounter a defenceless animal in need of a helping hand (or doctor's office to go and work out
) He isn't stupid, so probably realizes that I would do it again too if it was ever called for)
I wonder sometimes about karma...for not a great length of time after, again going to the docs, I spotted a skip outside a house where a load of stuff was being thrown away in what was obviously some kind of renovation. Went over to check it for copper pipe, lead sheeting etc. and spent a fair while methodically gutting the rubbish bags (was all dry,clean refuse no nasty slimy rotting food etc.) and whilst I found none, I did find a veritable treasure-trove of antique silver, and some silver/either ivory or whalebone that again, looked pretty old. The best of it being a large, heavy, solid silver jerusalem cross round necklace, in a silver circle surrounded by 4 knights' templar style crosses and inscribed on the back with hallmark, date (from about 1400-1500 AD if it isn't a modern fake, but its certainly weighty, and silver, with inscribed carvings on the back showing christ, the temple in jerusalem and what I think might be the apostles plus something else, I forget which, strung on a really nice braided rope-like linked chain, the likes of which no jeweller round here I've taken it to has ever seen before.)
Quite a bit of other, lesser silver, some gold stuff including a fake rolex (at least I think its a knockoff, I'm no expert), the silver writing-inlaid old ivory or whalebone page-turner (I'm sure you realize, miss K that I'd never support the ivory or whalebone trade in a lifetime of lifetimes. But at the same time, that, with its big, heavy silver endcap, and being quite definitely an antique piece I was certainly keeping, since for it to simply end up on landfill, rotting in a mound of fermenting, blowfly-infested slime would be bordering on the criminal.)
Plenty big heavy metal buttons, that given the nature of my other finds, I had a hunch about, and after wetting them, and sanding off a small, discrete invisible spot on a couple of them, I tested, by exposing the roughened, freshly revealed and moistened surface with hydrogen sulfide gas, upon which it took on the distinctive blackish grey patina of aged silver that has been exposed to people, which comes from the sulfur content in some amino-acids making up proteins, over time. The H2S test artificially creates the same silver sulfide and shows up silver metal for what it is, if its silver. Also a glass jar with a kinda helical looking outer surface and a really thick hinged rounded cup sort of lid t hat snaps shut over the top and is just perfect to use as a jar for storing/serving...certain powdery substances of an attention-focusing, perky nature. The silver part, the cap and its mounting and hinge are really big and chunky, the thinnest edge must be just under 4mm thick. Quite a lot of what look to be custom jewellery featuring semiprecious stones too that again looks to be of a kind of item not seen these days, such as a little star-shaped, semiprecious gem-inlaid dark metal hollow necklace with a small blunt ended thin metal rod attached by a short piece of chain, a perfume or some sort of anointing substance dispenser of some kind as far as I can tell, plus a silver or possibly some other valuable metal, quite lightweight, so might not be precious metal, but something like titanium, tantalum or niobium. Not sure what thats made of. Got quite a hall, plus a couple more necklace chains, without anything attached to then. I really couldn't believe my eyes until the chemistry set got pulled out and some testing done on things, that of all the places, I'd find that sort of thing in a skip.
