In the winter of 1940, a 12 year old boy lay in the Myers Memorial Hospital in West Virginia recovering from an operation.
It was a stormy night and Hugh Perkins was watching the snow pile up outside the window, when he was started by something more substantial beating against the pane.
He called the Nurse on duty and when she opened the window, a pigeon flew in.
It was not just any pigeon, but a racing bird Hugh knew well.
Several months earlier it had arrived exhausted in his back yard and, on being fed and cared for, had stayed and become a pet. But that was in the summer and in Summerville, 112 kms away from the hospital in Philippi.
“Look at his leg,” the boy told the nurse; “it has a ring on it with the number one sixty-seven.”
She did, and it had, and the hospital allowed him to keep the bird in a box beside his bed.
When the Perkins family came to visit Hugh a few days later, they confirmed that it was indeed his pet and had been seen around the house for several days after he had been admitted to hospital.
So it hadn’t come cross country with him, or simply followed the family car. It seems from the evidence, that the pigeon actively sought out the boy and succeeded, somehow, in travelling over 100 kms to do so.
Not only that, but it found the correct window, in the right building, in a strange town, at night and in a snowstorm
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This isn’t one of your famous dreams ?
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No. 
Not a dream of mine.
Someone else’s reality.
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Pigeons are intelligent and resilient.They even got medals in WW2
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I adore stories like this! Birds (and animals) are incredible!
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That would make a lovely Christmas film Bretrick.
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