LOST RACE ( dead last )

It's about a pigeon, and here's what happened. While I was cleaning the pool one day, I noticed what looked like leaves on the carport's opaque roof. When Tom got up there he found a dead pigeon--stiff as a board--probably been there a while. He knocked it down, and I picked it up by the wing, thinking I'd return it to nature by flinging it into the tall grass in the field. This closer look revealed two bands on its leg which I removed. (the bands, not the leg) One band was plastic and had a phone number on it; the other was metal with some kind of emblem. Later in the day I called the number and reached a guy in Fairfield, CA (Bay area) who told me that he'd released that bird 3 weeks earlier from Winnemucca NV expecting it to return to Fairfield CA. That 300 mile trip should have taken about 6-8 hours "as the pigeon flies". A look at the map shows that the pigeon nearly made it before he suffered an accident or engine failure of some kind, causing the dnf. I thought it was pretty amazing. For more on bird racing and homing pigeons see http://www.answers.com/topic/pigeon-racing. Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homing_pigeon.