On my weekly Wednesday medicinal walk today, I was divebombed by a familiar black-and-white shape. Luckily, it was a rather half-hearted attack, but it did remind me that it's swooping season here in Australia, a time when nesting birds become aggressively territorial and the worst of them, the razor-beaked magpies, have us humans scared stiff and skittering about to their tune.When I was a kid living on the outskirts of a small coastal town that seemed to breed especially aggro maggies, this was the one time of the year when the children living on our long stretch of country road would put aside our tribal differences and band together. Our goal was simple: to get to school. There were three nests we had to pass, and no way to avoid them unless we wanted to add hours to our journey - those maggies had wide territories and flew extensive patrols. And please, don't ask about our parents. In those long ago days, this kind of thing was kids' business, pure and simple. We would never have dreamed of bothering our parents with requests for protection or a lift in the car. It had nothing to do with them, and we had our pride to consider. That's just how it was.
So, we set off each day, hoping the safety-in-numbers strategy would work, all bunched together, clutching our school bags like shields and wielding big sticks. My memory is no doubt faulty, as well as prone to dressing up the past, but I remember our formation as a rather ragtag version of a Roman testudo formation , and we kids as juvenile legionnaires bravely setting off to do battle every day, as deeply frightened by the thought of our eyes being stabbed or our heads being pierced by sharp beaks as our Roman counterparts would have been of barbaric, Germanic hordes. But we were also thrilled to the tips of our tiny toes by the prospect facing of real danger and testing our mettle. We scared ourselves even sillier as we went by recounting tales of the horrific manglings we had heard about, with tales of maggies plucking out eyes, maybe even two from the same victim, as perennial favourites, these vile tales acting both as encouragement to each other, but also as a mean-spirited attempt to reduce someone to tears or, even better, make them break ranks and run home. No-one ever did. To have been branded a coward would have been worse than getting a beak in the head. Or so we thought.Our terror was deep and true and complete, and yet we went on, shrieking when we were divebombed and waving our sticks at the swooping monsters. Each day that we kids made it to school without any blood spurting in great gushes from our temples was a triumph. Not that I recall anyone ever getting hurt. But there were enough close calls to legitimize and further feed our fears. When nesting season ended, our alliance fell apart until the next breeding season.
I mention all of this because it seemed to me today as I walked that those childhood adventures incorporated all the fundamental elements of a horror story - the terror that writers try to tap into and recreate in their protagonists and the delicious scares and primal thrills that readers seek when they pick up a book of dark tales. Then, of course, there was also the camaraderie of fellow travellers venturing forth to vanquish vicious beast, so we were also experiencing a daily quest. And anyone who thinks I'm exaggerating the menace of magpies obviously hasn't faced down one of those black-and-white monsters of the air.
It wouldn't happen nowadays, of course. Folk check out the location of swooping birds on the Internet, tweet updates on aggro birds, buy handy anti-swoop toolkits from the Department of Sustainability and Environment, and drive their kids to school. Not that I'm romanticizing getting your eyes gouged out or recommending that anyone send their kids into a lion's den armed only with a Bowie knife in order to prove themselves. I'm just saying it was a truly terror inducing situation for us children, but not one without its redeeming features, and that one often treasures memories of a little scariness as much as one does memories of happiness.
3 comments:
Interesting that I had the the first Magpie swoop of the season yesterday morning.
For those in the North, the Australian Magpie is not the same breed as the Northern Hemisphere one. It is much larger and much more aggressive. My English wife is terrified of them here as she walks the dogs.
And yes, I used to walk to school past a nest or two, heard all the horror stories and became well practiced with my peripheral vision.
I remember I used to run to the tennis courts with my racket over my head like a flat cap.
Perhaps this is one little insight for us 'modern' people as to what it was like in earlier times. A bit like knowing there might be snake in any bit of long grass, any log with a split, any little cave in the bank of the creek. Wow, now I'm beginning to scare myself...
Combining these two comments, I'm thinking that perhaps, Steve, your wife should carry a tennis racket when she walks the dogs.
For I quite like the idea of a tennis racket as an anti-maggie weapon. Not held over one's head as parlance did, but used to bat the beast in the bottom as it comes flying past. Feathers would fly. It takes on a cartoonish quality in my head rather than an animal cruelty one. I don't suppose it would work in reality unless you had nerves of steel, a good aim and the precise swing of a professional tennis player. Hmmm.
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