A pigeon and a chihuahua puppy interacting on a fluffy gray blanket indoors under natural light. 3:04
GeoBeats Animals channel icon GeoBeats AnimalsOriginal creator 8.9M views Save

Herman the pigeon cares for newborn pups

Herman sat in the same spot in a parking lot for a couple of days. He was starving, and his head was tipped at a strange angle. more

Someone asked a woman if she would take a pigeon, and she said sure. She and her husband tube-fed him for a couple of days. He most likely had a virus that pigeons can get. He pulled through, but he never could fly again.

Nobody else would take him, and she knew he could never be set free. So she made the call. "I decided to just let him live with us forever."

Forever turned out to include tricks. She tells him to roll over, and he rolls over. "Good job, Herman," she says. "Oh, he's so proud of himself."

Herman spends his days among the dogs, and he seems to like it that way. "He walks around, and I'll look over and he'll be curled up with a dog." He even shares a bed with one of the smaller ones.

A small dog with black and white fur nuzzles a gray pigeon resting on a brown textured surface. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Herman spends his days among the rescue dogs, often tucked in right beside one.

His home is the Mia Foundation, an animal rescue that gets a lot of newborn puppies. So she started setting new puppies down beside Herman, and he did the same thing every time. He wanted to snuggle with them. He even tries to preen them, the way a pigeon cleans its own feathers.

A pigeon and a chihuahua puppy interacting on a fluffy gray blanket indoors under natural light. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Herman sat in the same spot in a parking lot for a couple of days.

Then the puppy grows up and goes off to be adopted, and a new one arrives. "So he always has the little babies that he can help me with," she says. One commenter summed up Herman's side of every adoption in four words: I raised that boy.

In the summer she brings him outside so he can walk around in the grass, and he likes that a lot. "Pigeons really get a bad rap," she says. "I'm amazed at their intelligence, how cuddly and sweet they are." She has kept birds her whole life, and she says she has never seen anything like Herman.

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