“The pigeons don’t wear jerseys in the cold because they don’t know how to knit, but flying under the radar in the cold will keep you alive.”

This was something his grandfather told him – often, repetitively and over and over and again and again and his grandfather was an interesting person, so he must have had a reason for this repetitive proverb.

He loved the stories his grandfather told him.

His grandfather told him that in the lead-up to the second battle of El Alamein in the Second World War, he had seen a dog be hit by a meteorite the size of a soccer ball. He said it was a clear night, and the slow creeping calculus of the stars could be seen in their full glory. To the world, it was a normal night.

The dog was a local stray that had adopted the troops and went around from tent to tent collecting scraps that were not needed, like housekeeping in a two-star hotel, often overlooked but missed when not there. Those men that did not kick him called him Denzil.

Denzil was special, and no one would ever know, but that is often the best part about being special – you know, but no one else does. Greatness can look like a standard pigeon, a three-day-old jam sandwich when you have not eaten for five days or a stray dog of no particular breed.

The allied troops, the kickers and non-kickers alike, did not know they were in the presence of greatness while Denzil was around.

Denzil would be a forefather of greatness – one of his great-great-grandchildren would be Laika, the first dog in space in 1954. From the desert coastal town where a big battle most alive today know nothing about happened, one of Denzil’s pups made it across the Mediterranean to Turkey and then on to Georgia, Ukraine and then onto the streets of Moscow. Laika’s mother grew up on the streets eating pigeons and rubbish.

The pigeons at El Alamein were not used for eating or decorating steel and stone statues of dead people; they were used to communicate with high-ranking
officials based in the Alps. The Alps are an ideal place to wear a jersey.

Denzil could eat anything and was always grateful, and it was this disposition that endeared him to those that did not treat him with contempt.

One night, while counting up his winnings from Anchor and Crown, his Grandfather looked up and saw a shooting star, a flash, and a crash and then when the dust cleared, there was a hole in the ground, and all that was left of Denzil was a front right paw…nothing else.

One night in 1942, a coastal Egyptian town was a site of a meteorite strike that killed a dog… “his name was Denzil.”  It never made the newspaper.

That same night, his grandfather made money off men that would die in a few days. The banker never loses at Crown and Anchor. Pigeons flew to the Alps even though they would never be able to knit. There is comfort to be found in knowing there are bigger things afoot than we know happening in the cosmic chaotic plan. Pigeons would be such a big part of his plan, and he knew how to knit.