- So that's bare flesh, I am wearing shorts.
If you saw my house plant tour video,
you'll know all about Steve, the friendly pigeon,
who I fed once and he never left.
Must have been some real good bird seed,
like the McFlurry of seed,
because he's just stuck around since then.
He mainly enjoys chilling on the wall,
aggressively cooing at me through the window
(pigeon cooing)
and causes me immense guilt every time it rains.
Let me in bitch.
At what point he became so confident,
he tried to move in.
What you're doing?
(exiting music)
You are on the wrong side of the glass.
Oh no, oh no!
That looked a bit traumatizing,
but he was totally fine.
This was all fun and games until one day I got a tweet
from @reidisdoodling on Twitter, obviously on Twitter,
where else they gonna send a tweet?
And they said, "please help Steve.
His foot is injured and he might get sick!"
(dramatic music)
ruh-row, I tried to get a closer look at him,
but he's been following social distancing rules
better than most people I've seen on Instagram.
He likes to keep a one to two meter distance
and so should you!
(laughing)
I finally got a good look while distracting him
with a mountain of seed
and it looked like he had something tied
around his foot, claw, feet?
They have feet?
They just have feet, feet.
I Googled it and apparently if it doesn't get treated,
the entire foot can fall off because they can't tend to it
with their little beaks and then they'll die
and then other birds might eat the foot, gross.
Anyway, Steve was in peril.
I didn't need a moral obligation to save a pigeon,
but I had it, this was my responsibility.
No one else was going to do anything.
So I had to save Steve.
The first thing I did was call the RSPCA,
the Royal Society for the Protection of Cool Animals.
I don't know what it stands for.
It's basically the main animal charity in the UK.
However, their automated phone line was just like,
"we're so busy, we've got so many Corona puppies."
A dog is for life, not just for pandemic, people!
They could only help if it was an emergency.
Was this an emergency?
I didn't know.
I mean, it's a pigeon, it's a wild feral bird.
It's not a baby horse trapped in an active volcano.
So I decided to email them just to make sure
what an emergency is.
So I was expecting them to be like, "nah mate",
by immediately got a reply,
"yes, this is an emergency call us right now".
So I gave them a call.
Firstly, I said that my name was Steve.
Steve, oh my name, I thought you meant the pigeon's name.
And I explained the intense emergency situation.
His foot, I think there's something around it,
like a wire.
They gave him an official emergency pigeon incident number,
which is not a sentence I thought I'd say,
and they said they do have officers
that might be able to help out,
but it'd be better if I could catch the pigeon myself
and take him to a local vet,
how the hell do you catch a pigeon?
I Googled it, one method is to throw a blanket or a coat
or something over the pigeon,
so he doesn't get chance to fly away
but I figured this might be super traumatizing,
so I didn't want to scare him off
and then never see him again.
The other method would be to do
some kind of Looney Tunes style stick and box trap,
but then you've got the stress of trying to get the pigeon
from out under the box safely.
The option I decided was to buy a mini pet carrier
and then like an evil psychologist,
or I guess a nice animal psychologist,
to Pavlovianly train Steve to voluntarily
wanna go inside the box and then he wouldn't hate me
like I committed some kind of grand pigeon betrayal.
Inside I've put a towel so he's comfy
and also I'm gonna put some seeds right at the back,
but I think this might scare him.
So we're going to have to think of a way
for that not to happen.
At first, he fully hated the box.
As soon as I open the window and he saw the box,
he flew away.
So this might be a long process of teaching him
this is a friend.
Just a perfectly innocent box of snacks
with a big metal door.
Wait, who the F are you?
Pause, wait, suddenly Steve had a girlfriend.
(magical chiming)
I'm pretty sure this was a girl as loads of other pigeons
came along and tried to do a puffed up pigeon male dance
around her and she was like,
"piss you, I want Steve."
I named her Scraggy,
which means ragged or untidy in form
or appearance because, well.
and they've been cleaning each others feathers
and sharing food, cute!
But this posed a problem
(laughing)
because I didn't wanna catch Scraggy too,
so I tried to only train him while he was alone.
So the plan was to catch him,
but then I also had to release him back in the same place,
so his bird wife wouldn't be like,
"when will my husband returned from the war?"
So the training began.
Over the next couple of weeks I only fed Steve
and occasionally Scraggy too
by only throwing seed into the back of the box.
Yes, the smell of the food is too strong.
No, no, no, no, scare.
And slowly but surely he started to go in!
(gasping) He's in, oh my God.
See if I can get closer, nope, nope, nope (laughing).
You're too clever!
During this time of trying to get Steve to go in the box,
I'd emailed about four local vets saying,
"hello, pigeon emergency, please help", two didn't reply
and one was exceptionally rude.
"Most vets do not have a duty of care to treat wild animals,
this lies with the wildlife trust and the RSPCA,
hope this clears it up."
The capital letters really helped.
"Kind regards, Paul."
Do I need to get lairy?
Why do you hate Steve so much, Paul?
Who hurt you, Paul?
Thankfully, I did get a friendly reply from one vet.
"Good morning, sorry for the delay.
Do you still have the pigeon?
And do you need someone to take a look at it?"
Please take my pigeons.
So I emailed them twice back,
but then they started to ghost me.
So I plucked up the courage and decided to make
another actual phone call.
I was just wondering if there's any chance
I could bring him in and you can remove
some string around his foot because he's limping
and he seems sad.
Wednesday, Wednesday, yes, oh, that'd be amazing.
We have a vet, Steve's gonna be saved!
Oh, that is such good news.
Now we just have to try and get him in a box
between 12 and three on Wednesday.
So I had to hope he would specifically be on my balcony
on Wednesday morning and he would voluntarily
go in the box and then I could trap him, no pressure.
Back to the box, training had gone super well,
but he would still run away every time I went to the door
to close it.
So it's clear, for this plan to work,
I had to do more to this plan, but I'd run out of time.
Wednesday morning, no Steve to be seen, of course.
(suspenseful music)
Steve, now's your time.
Couple of hours later, praise Jesus and the pigeon Gods,
Steve showed up (exhaling).
It was then I have the galaxy brain idea.
I'm going to tie this phone charger around the cage box
and then should be able to pull it closed.
So the plan was, Dan would pull the string cable,
while trying to record the action,
and I would run over close the cage
and try not to get my fingers pecked off.
It was now or never.
We have one shot.
If we F this up, Steve would never come back to the balcony.
This was the only chance we were going to get to save him.
It was time.
Now.
- [Phil] Go.
- It worked, we have Steve!
- [Dan] Sorry Steve, we're going to rescue you.
- Your friend will be back soon.
She just patiently waited outside,
I don't know why I'm doing this,
she's not a meerkat now, and she waited
as if Steve had been invited into our apartment
for some exclusive seed party or something.
Now, all I have to do is walk 10 minutes down the road
with a wild pigeon inside a box,
which is probably the most weird or suspicious thing
someone could be doing on a Wednesday afternoon
and also not walk into a lamppost
where it accidentally released the pigeon
into an oncoming bus.
Here's my pigeon walking outfit.
- Steve, it's your first time in a lift,
how do you feel?
- He's actually quite chill now that he's in the box.
Mainly cause I filled it with bird seed,
like some kind of Hansel and Gretel situation without me
being a child-eating witch.
The trek began to the vet and for some reason on that day,
London was an actual obstacle course.
We had people carrying ladders across the pavement,
honking bikes, honking people.
There was just a whole lot of honking.
This time last year,
if you asked me what I was gonna be doing now,
I wouldn't think I'd be wearing this mask
while taking a pigeon called Steve to the vet.
Steve was generally fine.
There was a few aggressive coos like (cooing)
and Dan had to stop me walking pigeon-first
into an old woman but apart from that, we were all right.
I got to the vet who was taking social distancing
very seriously, almost as if medical professionals think
that we should be social distancing
and wearing masks, who knew?
I gave them Steve
and they said that they could remove the string
and he would probably be fine.
I didn't like this probably,
but they said they'd call me when they had an update.
Apparently it's quite unusual for someone to bring in
a wild pigeon.
The wait began.
Would my son be okay?
(emotional music)
Steve's been at the vet for about two hours
and they said they'd call me but I just got a voicemail.
I feel like I'm scared they're going to say,
"his wings fell off, so we have to put him to sleep",
or something.
It was only 30 seconds, so I feel like if it was sad news,
it would be like a minute.
Cause you're not gonna day, "he died" and then hang up
in 30 seconds.
Anyway, right, we're going to listen, Steve be okay.
- [Vet] I'm just calling you to let you know
that the pigeon that you brought in to us
is all done.
He's all right. - Yes!
- [Vet] We got string off his foot.
He did have to lose a toe, unfortunately.
- No! - But they adapt
to that very quickly.
- Steve's okay!
Fireworks, celebration effects, more fireworks!
I guess he had to lose a toe
or whatever was wrong with his foot
but she said he's fine.
I think I wanna go get him now, so let's go.
So we immediately returned to pick up Steve.
- Steve! - See, he's healed!
- [Dan] Are you okay, Steve?
- [Phil] He's quite chill, they gave him some bread.
- Bread? - Yeah.
- [Dan] We didn't give him bread.
- I know, what a treat.
It's like he's gone to a five star restaurant.
So Steve is healed.
Sadly, he lost a toe in the process.
Apparently it had already lost all circulation,
so they just had to remove it
but apparently pigeons are fine with that
and they can go on with four toes instead of,
how many toes they got?
It's okay Steve, we're nearly home.
I got Steve home to release him exactly where I caught him.
This was the moment I was just so worried
that Steve would never forgive me and he'd fly away forever.
I bought some seed, which I'm gonna put on the feeder.
He'll be like, "ah, treat, home, I'm not stressed!"
You are free!
Yes, straight for food.
(Dan and Phil laughing)
I thought he'd be scared of me, but he's just like, "food?"
And he sat down with Scraggy as if nothing had happened,
not that he'd been abducted into a weird dark food box
or brought across London by two giants
and put in a strange room where his toe fell off,
no, he was fine if he just had some seed,
we should all take some inspiration
about how chill Steve was.
A week later and his foot is way better.
He's standing, he's trynna mount Scraggy,
I'll save you the clip of that.
It'll get demonetized.
They've also been picking random twigs off the floor
and flying off with them,
so maybe they even have a nest, baby Steves!
And the most interesting thing I did this summer
during a global pandemic was tried to rehabilitate
a wild pigeon,
just Phil things!
thanks to Reid, the pigeon expert,
for suggesting that I save Steve
and also to the kind vet and the charity people.
I'm quite emotionally attached to this bird now.
We definitely have a relationship where he knows
this is a safe territory to hang out
and as long as he stares at me for hours
and aggressively coos, I'll feed him.
I think I'll start weaning him off the seed
a little bit now though,
so he knows to forage for food without me.
(emotional music)
Please give me a thumbs up if you're happy Steve survived
and I'll put some links around my face
where you can subscribe
or visit my shop or watch my last video where I tell you
some awkward closeted moments.
So if you want to do any of that, click away.
I hope you're doing well
and I will say goodbye to you in pigeon (cooing).