Not all heroes wear capes. Some bring gloves.

It sounded more fun than it was. 

“When you come upstairs,” I called down to my wife, “please bring disposable gloves and a plastic packet.” 

She didn’t need to ask who it was for. Only what had happened that required those particular items. 

Penny, our French poodle, had gifted me with a bird she had sacrificed in my honour. And rather than leave me to discover her offering by chance, she had delivered it directly to my room and carefully placed it on my bed. 

I am not proud of the way I screamed. Or behaved. I was not brave. Or manly. But over the years I have come to accept my shortcomings. I have accepted that I am no warrior when it comes to animals. Living or dead. No matter their size or their ability to eat my flesh. 

Which is a bit weird. Because I am perfectly comfortable taking on bigots and haters and am happy to shrug off the daily death threats. 

But a dead pigeon is, to me, like a stone to Goliath. 

Which is why it was my wife who needed to remove the beast. Either that or we would have had to move homes. 

To be fair, Penny looked extremely pleased with herself. She had the posture of a soldier returning from battle. Chest out. Tail wagging. Eyes bright with pride. 

And yet instead of gratitude, she got shrieking and a request for rubber gloves. 

It was not the reaction she had imagined. Humans complicate things unnecessarily. 

Which is perhaps why, as I stood on the far side of the room pointing at the bed as if directing a bomb disposal unit, I couldn’t help but reflect on how odd our fears can be. 

There I was, a person who will happily sit behind a microphone and challenge politicians, extremists and professional trolls, completely immobilised by a pigeon that had clearly already had a very bad day. 

Perspective is everything. 

My wife, who has lived with me long enough to know there would be no heroics coming from my side of the marriage, arrived armed with the requested equipment. She surveyed the scene calmly, like a seasoned crime-scene investigator. 

“You’re ridiculous,” she said. 

This was not said unkindly. It was simply a statement of fact. 

With the efficiency of someone who has clearly done this before – which worries me slightly – she removed the bird, wrapped it in the plastic packet, and disposed of it. 

Penny followed the entire operation with interest, her head tilting from side to side, clearly confused as to why her magnificent gift was being treated like biological waste. 

And just like that, the crisis was over. 

But it got me thinking about the strange bravery that many of us practise in public life. 

It’s easy to imagine courage as something dramatic: standing up to mobs, speaking truth to power, confronting hatred. And sometimes it is exactly that. 

But courage is also deeply selective. 

Some people can argue constitutional law on television but cannot change a lightbulb. Others can run into burning buildings but faint at the sight of blood. And then there are those of us who will challenge extremists on social media but require protective equipment to deal with a pigeon. 

Each of us has our Goliath. Mine, apparently, comes with feathers. 

There is probably a lesson in all of this, though I’m not entirely sure what it is. 

Perhaps it’s that bravery comes in different forms. Or that the people who appear fearless often have their own peculiar phobias. Or maybe it’s simply that in every household there is one person who deals with the pigeons and one who writes about them afterwards. 

In our house, the division of labour is very clear. 

Penny hunts. My wife cleans up the evidence. And I scream, before reflecting deeply on the human condition. 

And turning the whole thing into a column.