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Endangered: Mrs Dell’s pigeon, ‘Elephant Jim’ pictured on its way out yesterday

A 72-year-old Whitechapel woman who has been feeding a wood pigeon with bacon scraps and fat, trimmed from meat joints for years is blissfully unaware that she is responsible for the creature’s chronic deep vein thrombosis or that she has increased its risk of having a heart attack or stroke by at least 400%.

Mrs Tracy Dell, a retired shop assistant, told The Whelk: “He loves his bacon does that bird and he visits my garden special to get it.

“He loves a bit of fat from the Sunday joint too. Lamb’s his favourite. It greases his lungs and keeps him regular”.

When we pointed out that the bird had already lost a leg due to a thrombosis-based issue that she was the root cause of, and that the high-fat diet she was exposing it to would increase its risk of a coronary episode a hundredfold, Mrs Dell became defensive and pooh-poohed the idea

“I used to give my husband Toby a very high-fat diet and he lived until he was almost 39” she explained.