The Black Page
Getting into a flap
by Joanne Black
A bird in the bush is worth two in the house.
The birds are getting their own back. After declaring last week that I wouldn’t know a grey warbler from a sparrow, odd birdie things have been happening. I don’t mean that the avian community has been massing on the power lines in preparation for attack, but there has been a series of incidents involving individual members.
The day after I wrote the last column, a black bird, which I assume was a blackbird, if you know what I mean, became trapped in the upstairs part of our construction site. (Some people call it a house; I am not one of them.) Here there is only one small point of entry and egress because the bits that may one day, possibly in my lifetime, become windows are covered with building paper.
Over the course of the day the bird became more and more distressed. I assured myself that if I climbed up into the space I would simply terrify it, and took the valiant option of doing absolutely nothing. But discomforted by hearing it flapping around behind my office wall, and seeing it through a nearby internal window, I found I couldn’t work and was forced to go shopping instead. Luckily, by the time I got home the bird had managed to retrace its steps, so to speak, and was gone. I was greatly relieved, and presume it was too.
Today a brown bird, which may be a brownbird, (well why not, they have bluebirds, don’t they?) started to build a nest in the new framing downstairs, where the window spaces are wide open.
Actually, it seems to be constructing not so much a nest as a kind of townhouse arrangement of adjoining nests. I can’t help but admire its sense of purpose. It seems quite determined that its family will occupy the house extension before mine. It worked all day, bringing weeds and grass through the gap that may one day be a bay window and arranging them on the top row of studs, just under the ceiling, hooked nicely over the new wiring.
Sadly for the builder, I think I’ll have to pull it all down tomorrow because one day, again hopefully in my lifetime, its chosen site will be covered by gib board. It’s surely better to undo its efforts now and give the bird a chance to rebuild in a better place. At last I begin to see the point of a resource consent.
n Assuming Flemington Racecourse has been cleared of whichever horse was mine in last year’s office sweepstake, the Melbourne Cup should be run on Tuesday. I am no fonder of horses than I am of birds, though at least horses don’t try to set up house in your rafters. At this stage I’ve never heard of any horse expected to contest the cup, and suppose that the only name I will know will be the one I pick in the sweep. On past form, that horse, too, will have to be removed from the track before next year’s event.
It’s odd that this one race should capture the imaginations of people who never otherwise make a wager. I think of myself as betting not so much on whether my horse will win, but on how quickly it will become pet food.
n Law enforcement in the United States and in New Zealand – compare and contrast. Angilo Freeland was not only shot dead by police in Florida, but was shot, ahem, 68 times – either thorough or embarrassing, depending on your point of view. In September 2006, Freeland, armed with a handgun, was stopped for speeding, fled the scene and shot and killed the officer and police dog who pursued him. A massive manhunt ensued. Next morning, nine officers armed with automatic weapons simultaneously opened fire on Freeland, trapped behind a log in a forest. Asked later why the fugitive had been shot 68 times, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd allegedly replied, “Because that was all the bullets we had.”
