Good Morning Mister Magpie IP

Good Morning Mister Magpie

I have a lone magpie living in my garden. Of all the garden’s, in all the streets, in all the world, why did he have to inflict his terminable sorrow on my garden?

We talk sometimes, when he’s in the mood for company, always on his terms, never on mine. He says cacacacacacaca. I interpret that to be his complaints about the squirrels who take the lion’s share of the food. Either that or he’s just telling me how shit his life is.

We talk about loneliness and agree that it pretty much sucks. I tell him to tidy up his scratty arse feathers that are all stubby and stick out at odd angles, and then maybe he’ll find a mate.  He looks at me with loathing and tells me to get my own house in order before I fling my personal slights in his direction.

I’m sitting at the garden table next to the fence, I can see that I’ve hurt his feelings so I offer a truce and agree to share my Dime Bar. I break it into tiny pieces and extend my hand with the chocolaty morsels in my palm.

I can wait.

He cocks his head and looks, it’s a ritual, he knows the score, we’ve been here before. He flies from the garage roof to the fence by the table about eight feet away from me. He cocks his head again and his beady black eye pleads with me to throw the chocolate on the floor. Not happening, you want what I’ve got—you meet me half way.

He hops from foot to foot in frustration, edging closer five feet, four, three and then we hit the stand-off. He won’t come closer, I won’t give in.

It’s too much for him, he shoots me with a ricochet charge of cacacacacaca that hits me and bounces back to him. When his threats don’t work and the shouting is done, he pretends indifference and pecks at a bud on the pear tree, but his eye and his tension give him away.

The pull of what he wants from me is too much. His ploy that I’d give up and throw the treat down has failed, he knows it, I know it. He looks at me. ‘Look love, I want it, you know that I do, now you can either give it up, or not, but you’re never going to get more from me than these three feet.’

And I realise that that’s the extent of our relationship. He wants what I have but he won’t give anything in return. He’ll take and take and then leave me. These meagre scarps of interaction are all that I can expect. I’ll never tame him and if I did it would be entrapment.

He stamps his foot on the fence and I almost laugh, I have to hold it in so that I don’t scare him away, he doesn’t like to be ridiculed. He’s like a petulant child but he still wants my chocolate. Delta, the fourth male in the troop of squirrels, one of last year’s young, scampers along the fence and Magpie stands his ground. Delta is more interested in the nuts that I’ve scattered but ignores the bread, almost a full loaf, bought a week ago to make a man’s cooked breakfast and only two slices taken. I could have bought a small loaf, but in comparison they’re so expensive, so I pay extra and buy a large one for two slices, to please a man who comes, and eats and deposits and sleeps and takes and leaves, like the grammatical metaphor of the panda, eats, shoots and leaves. The birds can have the bread and the rats—we’re never more than fifty feet from one.

Mister Magpie isn’t interested in the bread, or the nuts, he wants my pieces of chocolate, but only because they’re mine. I wonder if chocolate is toxic to birds and take malicious pleasure from the thought.

The dime bar is melting in my hand; I can feel the warm ickiness from the weak sun’s work. I’m bored of him anyway.

‘Here, have it.’ I throw it to the ground in temper and the sudden movement and the bitterness in my voice send him to flight in a flurry of wings and scratty arse feathers. But he doesn’t fly far, to the gutter and then back to the fence.

I’m thinking that I’d like to do something, but I have nobody to do anything with so probably won’t bother getting changed from my trackies today. I light a cigarette, all interest in the bird done as he comes eight feet, five, three. He hops to the floor, mindful that it might be a trap, one eye keeping track, more intent on me than he’s ever been.

He eats my chocolate, returns to the fence and laughs at me. He knew he’d get it in the end; all he had to do was play the game and cac a few sweet words, my company is cheap—his is priceless. And I wonder if this will change things. Will he be more attentive now? Does this mark the point of a new status between us?  He turns around, lifts his tail and shits on my table before flying away.

But He’ll be back and we’ll talk, cacacacacaca.