Five strangers drove 600-mile relay to save an injured pigeon

Natalie Wallington THE WASHINGTON POST – Night had fallen in the rural town of Blacksburg, South Carolina, when 26-year-old PhD student Mae Kwong-Moses pulled into the Food Lion parking lot. Another car arrived, and its driver emerged, handing her a cardboard box with holes punched into the sides. She thanked the stranger, buckled the box into her back seat and began a three-hour drive south. It was the final stretch in what its participants have dubbed the Great Pigeon Relay: a crowdsourced bid to transport an injured pigeon down the Eastern Seaboard, from Baltimore to the Ramsey Loft, a pigeon-specific rescue aviary in Hephzibah, Georgia. The 600-mile trip was carried out on April 30 by people in five cars, most of them strangers who connected over social media to coordinate the effort. The pigeon, which its chauffeurs named Passenger, was rescued in Baltimore by Mel Tillery on April 27. Tillery was driving to the Enoch Pratt Free Library in the Roland Park neighbourhood of Baltimore when they spotted an immobile bird in the middle of the road, probably hit by a car. Most people would have kept driving, but Tillery, 34, who has experience with wildlife rehabilitation, was quick to…
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