Taff Down Under 11

Hello again my chums, hope you are all well and happy? Here's some more of my inane drivel to keep you amused.

 

The other day I was sat outside on the veranda, having a brew and a ciggy, and was watching our moggy, Tiger, amble his way across the garden. When out of the sky a bloody great currawong dropped down and attacked him with a crack of beak and snap of wing that made me sit up and pay attention.

Now you have to remember that this is the cat that, although fat and diabetic, attacks next door's collie-cross when it gets into our garden and tears lumps out of it. To be fair to the cat, after recovering from the shock he carried on strolling up the garden. And so it attacked him again.

This time Tiger legged it up the garden, and hid under my chair. I was so impressed that this bird could inspire fear in our ferocious moggy. I was even more impressed when the bastard thing attacked me.

I was sitting there minding my business when it went for me. I bloody shit myself the first time. But after a few times, and once I realized it was still after the cat and not me, I sat back, kept kicking the moggy out from under the chair and enjoyed the floorshow. Mind you, if I had a tennis racket at hand, there would have been black and white feathers everywhere.

Here we go, this relates to magpies, but it was definitely a wong that attacked me. I've learned the difference now since LeeAnne gave me such an ear bending for calling George a wong…

 

Magpie attacks

Magpies have adapted well to suburban areas and feed and breed in parks, gardens and adjacent bushland. One characteristic of magpie behaviour does not fit well with urban populations. During the breeding season, usually between August and November, magpies can become very aggressive and will swoop and attack passers-by. Male magpies are mainly, but not exclusively, the attackers. The majority of attacking magpies fly past people from behind, clipping their ear or swooping close to their head. While it is disconcerting, and may frighten young children, little damage is done.

Extremely aggressive magpies may land in front of people, who they view as threatening their nest, to attack them front-on, although this is rare. Magpies are aggressive only during the breeding season when the male is protecting chicks. The breeding season and associated aggressiveness correlates with the growth of the testes in the male magpie. Their testes become enlarged and testosterone pumps through the male's body. The rest of the year the testes shrink and testosterone levels are lowered.

What to do: The best way to avoid being attacked by a magpie is to avoid entering nesting areas while the young are in the nest. If a magpie attacks once, avoid the park or take an alternative route for several weeks (chicks remain in the nest for around four weeks after hatching).

What not to do: Throwing objects at the birds will only aggravate them further and make them more aggressive. Remember, the bird is defending its young.

Oh while I'm on the subject of George, him and his missus brought their chick around for our inspection the other day. Very nice it is too, congratulations to the happy parents. Hell of a caw on him when he's hungry. (That's from when he wakes up, till he goes to sleep by the sound of it.)

You can just imagine George teaching the little one; "Now here is where we come for the free grub, you have to suck up to them a bit, but they generally come up with something stale for us. Oh and watch out for that fucking cat, he's been a bit shifty since Brian from that big gum tree gave him a kicking."

The funniest thing is that, as usual, we gave him a few biscuits as he takes them from our hands. He broke these up into not very little chunks and proceeded to ram them down the chick's throat. It looked so painful that LeeAnne went and got some sliced ham for him instead

 

Oh and we watched a couple of cockatoos shagging on our bird table the other day. They both seemed to enjoy it, even though his seduction technique was even less subtle than mine.

 

Staying with wildlife, I was out in the garden (again, but a different day, do keep up!) and I thought I saw a bat flittering amongst the trees. Luckily before I called LeeAnne out to see it, I realized that the middle of the day was an unusual time to spot a bat. I went down for a closer look, and found it to be a massive (by Brit standards) butterfly. I got all excited and called LeeAnne out to see it. Of course she took great delight in informing me that these are common as muck around here. The funny buggers like water, and we saw a couple at the swimming pool the other day, flying inches above the water. Mad.

 

Bethy's joined a swimming class, run by the royal lifesaving association. Swimming is so big over here; the Aussies won most of the gold medals at the last Olympics. On the first day they had tests to see which group they were to go in. I'm chuffed to say that Bethy ended up in a group of kids 2 years older than her, and they are all at least a foot taller than her, but she gives them a hell of a good run for their money. In fact the last thing they did on that day was a swimming race, Bethy came third out of a group of eight.

 

She must be compensating for me, as I cannot swim an inch, and refuse to go over my ankles in water. See I'm not perfect after all, even if you think I am.

 

Talking of sports, it was ever so fucking embarrassing the first Ashes test match. The Aussies made us look like a pissed village team. Found out that the Welsh guy with the exploding knee, Simon Jones was the son of my old man's best cricket mate, Jeff Jones. They used to play together for Dafen Cricket Club.

 

Of course Simon made the mistake of dropping to the ground knee first expecting it to go "sploosh!" like it does in the UK. As we are in the middle of a mega drought over here the ground is like granite, stupid sod.

 

While we are on the subject of the drought, someone who uses the same discussion forum as I do came up with this picture of a dust storm:

The residents of Griffith rushed to seal their houses at dusk yesterday as a fierce dust storm raced into the town with warning, propelled by winds of up to 90 kilometres an hour. The dust cloud moved across the state and into Sydney today.

Everything here is gearing up towards Xmas now, which is bloody funny as its just getting hotter and hotter. You have to feel sorry for the poor buggers who have to dress as Santa in these bloody conditions. Just a reminder, it has rained, and then only light showers, five times since I've been here. That's five days of light rain in five months. And that was what they called winter. The funniest thing is that the weather forecast we use on the net always has rain predicted for a week on Thursday; I think it's a morale boosting exercise. We do have storms predicted in a couple of day's time too, but I'm not holding my breath.

The trouble is with this dry weather is that the static you build up is immense. The worse place for this is the gym, as it has that sort of carpet that makes static so…..enervating. I went to the water fountain to get a drink the other day and got a blast that made my eye's light up like a pinball machine. Not cool.

 

LeeAnne's just had her first couple of paragliding lessons, and very good at it she is too. The first day she had an introduction to the kit, and then got a few low hops in, running down a gentle hill. She managed to keep going for ages despite having a chute that was a size too big for her.

The funniest thing happened not that day but the day she got back to work. Front launching the glider had left her with massive bruises, real "sunset in the Caribbean" jobs, on both her biceps, covering most of the muscle. As LeeAnne has a good set of biceps, and she wears short-sleeved tops to work, they were admired by all and sundry. Except for one person who saw them as "classic examples of male violence and physical abuse," and wouldn't be persuaded otherwise. As if I'd dare, she'd cut me bollocks off with a rusty penknife as I slept!

Unfortunately the second day was blown out, so they had a days flying theory. One person on the course, an opinionated little shite called "Tim" really gave her the gip. I'm surprised she didn't slap him about some. She must really want that license.

I did get to drive the 4WD down a few miles of rough hill, with it loaded with trainee pilots. Bet that was more scary than any fucking flying they did!

 

Mary, the mother in law (Cloud covers moon, wolf howls in the distance…) drove herself down to Melbourne last week, to stay with her sister Wilma. It's a massive fucking drive by anyone's standards, seven and a half hours in temperatures in the 30's, but when you do it alone and your seventieth is on the horizon? Bugger they breed them tough down here..

Anyway, when she got there Wilma was most upset, as her handbag had been stolen.

While she was in church.

To make matters worse, some stupid old sod had seen a youth leaving the church with a handbag and challenged him. The youth claimed the bag was his, and opened it to show the contents, (lipstick, make-up, perfumes, drivers license with Wilma's picture on it, etc.) "Oh sorry," says the old duffer, and lets him go….

This Wednesday I did my drama group with the "learning difficulties" crowd. We were doing a warm up exercise, where they all close their eyes, and I show one of them an object. The rest of the group then have to work out what the object is by asking questions of the victim, who can only answer "yes" or "no." It went reasonably well, until it was one youth's go.

Is it hard? Yes.

Can you eat it? Yes

Is it round? Yes.

Is it an apple? No.

Is it a lemon? No.

Is it an orange? No.

Is it a cherry? No.

Is it a potato? No.

(This went on and on through every round edible hard thing you can imagine…)

Ok we give up what is it?

A videocassette!

 

Ah hum…think I may have to give him a bit of help next time…

 

I heard my first "strewth…" the other day, little old boy arguing with his missus in the Mall. I'm hoping to hear a "crikey" next, though not from that mad Steve Irwin twat.

Oh, I've lost every sod's snail mail address, wiped the file with them all in it, buggered if I know how. So please can you e-mail me your snail mail addresses, or there's no Xmas card for you!up the barbie on the veranda, and made brews on there, great fun!