Purple Pigeon

I took Olga to the cemetery for a walk yesterday, and saw an unusual pigeon perched on a headstone. At first I thought it was just an odd color. Then I pulled out my zoom lens and saw this, and thought, "Oh no! Is that BLOOD?"

But I think it's actually blackberry juice. This pigeon has apparently been feasting.

Soon it flew to a birdbath and did its best to get cleaned up. By the time it took off -- obviously uninjured and unimpaired in any way -- it had managed to make itself only slightly more presentable. I have a feeling it will be purple for a while.

Olga, meanwhile, found her own brand of excitement:

She discovered an abandoned football. Weirdly, it had no outer covering at all -- it was just a mass of threads surrounding an inflatable rubber core.

She was very proud of herself.

We played with it for a while -- nothing turns this old dog into a puppy again faster than a football. But eventually she got tired and I managed to wrest it away from her and throw it in a rubbish bin. She seemed content to let it go at that point. We didn't need to add that filthy thing to our stash of dog toys.

I just finished Sarah Krasnostein's book "The Trauma Cleaner," which I LOVED. You may remember I read her book "The Believer" a couple of months ago. "The Trauma Cleaner" is non-fiction, about a transgender woman in Australia who has led quite an unconventional life -- first as an abused child, then a young husband and father, eventually a sex worker, funeral director and wife, and, now, the owner of a cleaning service that specializes in heavy-duty jobs like crime scenes and hoards. The book explores the existences of people who are living at the margins -- disconnected from family or any other support, unable for whatever reason to manage their lives, and the potential costs of overcoming societal shaming and oppression in order to move forward. I think Krasnostein might be my new favorite author.

Also, I spoke of my affinity for true crime stories in my post yesterday, when I mentioned "Only Murders in the Building." Dave and I watched another brief documentary series on Netflix called "The Puppet Master," about a British con man who manages to entrap and exploit numerous women, some for more than a decade. It's a mind-blowing story.