The September coup

 

I won’t term it as nothing short of a coup, September coup. The very same fragile, see-through nest had another dove couple setting home and hearth. A surprise—two eggs survived to hatch. Many factors contributed to it. One, the yard was catless during this period. Only one feral cat spent time in the garden but I doubt it ever hunted even a mouse. Even kittens would spank it. So it spent most of the time hiding and begging a few pieces of chapatti from me when hunger would break all limits. Fifteen days of shraadh also contributed. People left lots of eatables as ceremonial offerings on wall-tops for monkeys and birds, especially crows. So they were well fed, taking little interest in dove kids.

The nest is so small and fragile that one of the hatchlings fell and died. It was a plump kid. Then it rained incessantly for three days. The little one somehow kept clutching at the tiny, tilted nest. The hatchling looked bigger than the nest. Look at the seriousness of the parents in preparing a home for their kids! Hitting a jackpot of luck, it grew to look like a dove. Then it went missing on September 25, most probably served as breakfast to some predator. But still I would consider it a successful hatching from the dove standards because the majority of their eggs don’t survive. Here at least something grew at last to look like a dove.