BY JOHN FITZGERALD
The fictional Dr. Doolittle had the power to talk to the animals. Pure fantasy of course. And the mythical Pied Piper of Hamelin could compel the rats to leave an infested medieval town.
But in Callan we had a man who could well be described as Doolittle and the Pied Piper rolled into one. Paddy Power of Skeaugh had a special gift for communicating with the bird and animal kingdoms. The old saying about a person who could “charm the birds out of the trees” was never meant to be taken literally.
Yet Paddy did it thousands of times in the course of his colourful life. And his prowess with a catapult earned him accolades from the top brass in Ireland’s elite Defence Forces.
Speaking to Sean Holden, he recalled that he grew up in a street in Callan where almost every house had a bird, mostly budgies or canaries, chirping away outside their front doors. Paddy learned to mimic the sounds made by birds and then discovered that he could literally “call” them from the sky or out of a bush. He told Sean: “I could stand in my back yard as a youngster and whistle to a particular bird, and that bird would immediately fly to me, into my outstretched hands.”
As his power grew, Paddy found himself calling birds of all kinds, such as larks, thrushes, blackbirds, crows, goldfinches, swallows, jackdaws, and Willie wagtails. Sometimes, when he called a bird, other birds not specifically targeted by his signal would approach him. On one occasion, he was calling a jackdaw perched on a rooftop. To his consternation, hens and a rooster came hurtling towards Paddy, clucking and cock-a doodling around the yard until he persuaded them to leave.
At first, he released each bird after attracting it towards him, but then he began to collect birds, and pursue his lifelong passion for pigeon racing. When he retired from his job at the local Bacon factory, he devoted all his free time to this hobby.
At the time Sean Holden interviewed him in 1987, Paddy had 200 racing pigeons and around 300 native birds of all sorts in his vast avifauna complex in Skeaugh. He was a prominent member of the Kilkenny Cage Bird Society, and held guests spellbound when he elaborated on the virtues of bird keeping and pigeon racing at the aptly named Perch lounge in Kilkenny, where the society met.
A multi-sonorous orchestra of bird noises, a never-ending cacophony of tweeting, warbling, squawking, and chirruping greeted visitors to his home in Skeaugh. Some people wondered how Paddy put up with this perpetual racket in the garden. But he was deeply committed to his birds. When he won a holiday to Kenya worth £2000, he turned it down, as it would mean leaving the birds unattended for a fortnight!
Paddy was equally famous for his ability to communicate with man’s best friend. He would put two fingers in his mouth and emit a shrill, ear-splitting whistle that brought dogs from all points of the compass to his side. If he whistled late at night, when self-respecting canines were locked in or asleep, or both, the town would erupt in a ferocious frenzy of howling, keening, and barking. A bit like the ghostly Hound of the Baskervilles baying at the moon-its cry of woe amplified a hundredfold and drawing forth a string of curses and sleepy-eyed complaints from householders in the town.
When Paddy served in the army, he was the only soldier allowed two bivouacs-or tents. This was to accommodate the dogs he insisted on bringing with him on manoeuvres. On one memorable day in the mid-50s, he was about to leave Callan in a lorry that was part of a long convey of military vehicles heading to County Wicklow for a major “war games” event.
As the engine began to rev up, a fellow trooper casually asked Paddy if he had forgotten to bring his two or three dogs with him for the big day. Or if he felt that perhaps they might be difficult to control and keep an eye on in the midst of the mock battles and other activities that required his full attention.
Without saying a word to his friend, Paddy leapt from the back of the lorry, ran around to the driver and said, “Hold on for two minutes, I have to call someone”. Thinking Paddy wanted to make an urgent telephone call, the driver agreed to wait. The lorry was parked in Green Street. The rest of the convey in front of it moved on, while the lorries behind were delayed as Paddy walked calmly towards Chapel Lane.
Standing at the entrance to the lane, he let off a blood-curdling whistle that sounded, in the words of a nearby female witness, “like an air raid siren and an angry bee buzzing at the same time”. For a second or two, nothing seemed to happen. The lorries were held up and bystanders waited to see if any dog would answer the call.
Then a few barks were heard in the distance, growing louder by the second, followed by a blowing of horns and excited yelling from townspeople as dogs came charging from all directions, converging on the spot where Paddy stood from the Clonmel Road, Bridge Street, the Fair Green, and Newmarket Lane: The barking reached a deafening crescendo. Scenes of canine chaos developed on Green Street.
Within minutes, mutts and mongrels of every breed-and half breed-imaginable mobbed Paddy: Watch dogs, bull dogs, sheep dogs; pooches, poodles, pointers and spaniels; a Chihuahua and an Alsatian. A grand total of thirty-five canines had assembled, dutifully awaiting instructions from their temporary master.
Paddy ushered them aside and returned to the lorry, emitting another spine-tingling whistle that sounded slightly different to the previous one. The dogs followed him as he raised himself back into the lorry. Twenty or more of them hopped into the vehicle, where they shared the confined space with the soldiers. The rest were reluctantly taken into other lorries.
Under Paddy’s supervision, the thirty-five Callan dogs were released into the Glen of Imall later that evening. When an officer asked why he had taken so many dogs with him, Paddy explained that he wanted to give them a day out. “You know”, he said, “a bit of fresh air, and the run of the County Wicklow countryside.”
As Paddy and the other brave defenders of Ireland’s neutrality and freedom from foreign invaders went about their business-rehearsing for any unprovoked attack on the homeland, the motley army of mutts chased everything that moved in the Glen of Imall, including farmers, army officers, other dogs, sheep, rats, their own shadows-it was getting dark at this stage-and unsuspecting joggers.
Meanwhile, back in Callan, anxious and bewildered dog owners were scouring the town and countryside, searching for their beloved pets. A large notice, pinned up in the local Garda Station and in the church porch weeks earlier as part of a sheep worrying awareness campaign, had posed the chilling question: “Do You Know Where Your Dog Was Last Night? Examine Your Conscience!”
Not even the most direfully suspicious and doom-laden dog owner in the town guessed that a sizable percentage of Callan’s canine population had been transported to the Glen of Imall.
As dawn broke the following day, Paddy’s army buddies asked him how he could possibly retrieve all the dogs, since they were running riot across the countryside. Paddy emerged from his tent, drank a glass of water, and faced the rising sun with his fingers again placed strategically in his mouth. Closing his eyes, he whistled a direful signal into the vast Wicklow wilderness.
Again, a chorus of barking followed as the dogs came racing back towards him, wagging their tails in satisfaction and fulfillment. The thousands of troops seated around campfires could only shake their heads in admiration.
The dogs were returned safely to Callan, ending hours of frantic speculation as to where they had been.
Though not too happy with Paddy’s canine escapades, his superior officers in the army were suitably impressed by his “eagle eye”. He told Sean Holden of a Captain George Glendon who complimented him on his exceptional scouting abilities and marksmanship.
When pals went fishing with rods, Paddy shot trout with a catapult, a skill he acquired in his teens. Even in later life, he was a familiar sight on the big bridge in Callan, taking careful aim at a fish, which he could see under water. He was more precise and accurate with his chosen weapon than the guidance system of a Cruise Missile.
Paddy’s ability to talk to rats made even his closest buddies cringe in horror. He could put his hand into a hole in a wall known to contain a rat, grasp the petrified creature, and pull it out, clasping it firmly in both hands. He could then calm its nerves by whispering words of comfort to it. Not that he particularly liked rats. He just relished the challenge of confronting one of man’s oldest fears.
Paddy’s knowledge of rats and their subterranean ways resulted in Callan people seeking his advice and assistance in solving their pest control problems. When still in his teens, he was credited with a “miracle”, arising from an encounter with a rat.
A man who was confined to bed with an unknown ailment sent for Paddy and asked him to lay a trap for a rat he had heard shuffling about in a downstairs room of his house.
Paddy laid the trap at the exact spot he assumed the rat would appear, and it caught the intruder. But the rat was only stunned. Paddy removed it from the trap and took the disorientated rodent upstairs to the invalid. He was sure the man would be delighted to see his furry foe neutralised, if not exactly dead.
As soon as the bedroom door opened, and the man saw Paddy with the large, twitching rat in his hands, he leapt from the bed with staggering energy, ran down the stairs, and out onto the street in his night gown.
“I had cured the man”, said Paddy, “It was a miracle!”
