Karma? I took note of the wedding/funeral doves over the 2 on Friday, and Saturday there's a wounded turtle dove standing in front of me on Echo Park Avenue, unable to fly or even walk very fast. I'll call "her" a she -- mainly because of the cumbersome -- some could call intrusive -- way our language deals with gender. If you don't choose him or her you're stuck with it. So, she had almost all of her tail feathers ripped out, probably by a cat. Pet on pet violence.

We got a cardboard box from Fix Cafe and carried the little dove home. Then I spent a lot of time on the phone with wildlife organizations, who confirmed that the dove is a turtle dove and probably a pet. Care was discussed. But the agencies declined to look at our little dove -- one of them because she is not an aquatic bird and not covered in oil, the other because she is not a wild bird, and if she is wild, they implied, she shouldn't be because the eurasian banded turtle doves are mating with the native mourning doves and that's not a good thing.

My daughter named her Lovey Dovey. And what a magical little creature she is. If she lives we'll be looking to find her a new indoors home. And in the meantime, we're not stuck with her. We're just glad she's mending.