Magpie

There is a beautiful thing about animals that I am sure readers who have the privilege to observe wild animals closely and make friendships with them will have also observed: we give them little things like food, that cost us next to nothing, for a long time they will they have no chance to give anything back; but when they do get that chance, they give everything they have.

The other day on the news there was a child who was attacked by a magpie, and tragically his eye was damaged. He was an amazing kid: the reporter asked him whose fault it was and he said Dad's, because dad forgot to tell him not to ride his bike in the magpie season. I wondered why it was only dad and not mum, but apart from that, it's a pretty wise way to look on life. But what I wanted to think about today was whether anything positive can be done to improve the sometimes poor relations between people and magpies.

I mentioned a while back that our neighbour's magpies, Billy and Polly, had had three or four bubs, and then I said I hadn't seen them around. Today Billy came down to see us after Maggie had gone off to his back paddock, and he stacked his beak and flew into the tree, where there were two bubs waiting. Good old Billy, who couldn't think about anything but his own stomach for years and who gave his poor old dad (now departed) apoplexy trying to get him to behave like a decent magpie, is now dutifully fathering his own kids. Good on you Billy!