Two dead pigeons

were on my way to the Tube this morning - not eaten - just killed, one in the gutter and the other beneath a wall, each surrounded by a mass of feathers. This lead me to wonder, for a moment, whether animals (I assume it was a cat that had killed them last night) can harbour psychopathic tendencies - cats, especially in Ealing, are unlikely to have gone hungry, and pigeons are quite sizeable opponents to take on. So maybe the cat just flipped out. Went postal. Or maybe it was simply indulging its primeval genetic make up. Or maybe these two things aren’t entirely different. Then I got to the Tube and thought about something else.

Are you lonesome tonight?

Then spare a thought for George, who is, quite possibly the last of his species (Geochelone nigra abingdoni) on the Earth, and, it seems, disinterested in continuing his line - efforts to extract sperm and cross-breed with other local tortoise species have failed, and the search is on for a female of the same species who seems to be breeding on another of the islands. $10,000 is quite a bit of money. Would it be wrong for me to become a tortoise pimp?