While on a day trip to Bentworth, Hampshire, a family accidentally hit a pigeon with their car. However, since there was no sign of an injured bird on the scene, the Cotterells continued on toward their destination. What they didn’t know was that the poor pigeon had managed to get stuck behind the grille of their car! They made the 80 mile drive back home to Hassocks, Sussex, without realizing they had an extra passenger.
“We couldn’t see the bird anywhere so thought the bird must have flown off,” said Katherine Cotterell, according to a post from East Sussex Wildlife Rescue & Ambulance Service (WRAS).
Someone walking past the family’s house happened to notice the bird and immediately alerted them. The Cotterells contacted that East Sussex WRAS, who were able to get the creature out from between the car grille and the radiator.
“At first I was not sure how the pigeon even managed to get inside as the grill appeared intact,” said operations director Trevor Weeks. “It was only on closer inspection that you could see a crack in the grill which must have been caused by the force of the pigeon hitting it. I’m not surprised that they didn’t notice it being in there.”
Although the animal sustained minor injuries and lost some feathers in the accident, UPI tells us that it’s nothing a bird can’t recover from. Trevor says that both the odds of a pigeon getting into this specific situation and leaving it unscathed are pretty unusual!
“We occasionally get called to such incidents, but they are normally badgers or pheasants stuck in the bumper or car grill but to have a pigeon survive cracking and going through the car grill as well as surviving the journey back from Hampshire was quite unbelievable,” he said in the same post from East Sussex WRAS.
We’re hoping that the lucky bird has a speedy recovery!
You can find the source of this story’s featured image here.
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