"Christmas won't be Christmas without any [dead pigeon bones]"

Bonus points if you recognize the quotation (Amy in Little Women). Even more bonus points if you realized I was talking about the very deceased homing pigeon from World War II that was just found in an English chimney, message capsule still intact.

From The Huffington Post:  "Martin said he and his wife Anne "were stunned it was like Christmas had come early. The chimney was full of hundreds of twigs and rubbish and then I just started finding various bits of a dead pigeon."

Obviously I have been doing the gift giving thing all wrong.

The other thing that struck me about the story (apart from the sad poignancy of homing instincts gone terribly wrong) is that it's taking so long to decode the message.  Surely somewhere the British Government still has "A Handy Guide to WW II Codes" or some such.   However, it seems like it might have been a tough nut to crack even then:

"Whatever it was, it must have been "highly top secret," said Colin Hill, curator of Bletchley Park’s ‘Pigeons at War’ exhibit and a volunteer for the Royal Pigeon Racing Association. He told the Mail that of more than 30 messages from WWII carrier pigeons in the collection, not a single one is written in code."

What will it say??!!!