I like Magpies. They're smart.

When my daughter was just learning to toddle around our back yard, many moons ago, a magpie family started to visit each day when we were outside. Mum and dad would sit on the fence and watch while baby magpie and my teetering offspring chased each other very slowly around the back yard. It went on for weeks. I'll never forget the image of my daughter sitting down suddenly with a piece of cheese in her hand and the baby magpie running up and grabbing it, and daughter earnestly stumbling around the yard after it, her hand outstretched repeated "Ta...." "Ta.....". Cutest thing ever.

Might sound insane but I'm sure they were bringing their baby for play-dates. Why else would they continually come to our yard at the same time each day? Supposedly they slowly put their babies in increasingly more dangerous situations to get them used to predators. It's clever stuff.

I used to wonder if they were sitting on the fence saying to each other 'Look at it! It's a baby human! Isn't it cute? I hear the mothers watch them for up to 20 years! Can you imagine? They're really quite intelligent. Aren't they fascinating. Do you think we should feed it? The mother's clearly a bit simple; she's feeding it cheese".

Anyway, being spring here, it's baby magpie season and the other day after some very strong winds, I was a little dismayed to discover that there was a baby in our backyard. It's not a great choice of venue since we have a very predatory cat and dog. The baby isn't even close to flying yet so he's actually stuck in the yard and the parents are trying very hard to prevent us from accessing the yard in their own special way (If you come out here I will dive-bomb you and I will drill a hole in your head with my beak).

Now without the cat and dog it's a good yard; all fenced in and no other cats dare come near our house. So I decided to keep the dog and cat inside and let mum and dad do their thing in relative safety. 

Baby isn't progressing much; he just sits in the long grass (which was due to be mowed this week but I've had to put that on hold too) and turn his head back and forth with his mouth open, sort of like one of those carnival clown games. Daughter goes out to trampoline (they don't try to swoop her when she's jumping up and down) and her assessment is that she gets why I want to protect baby maggie , but "it's clearly an idiot. It isn't going to last long anyway". 

The weather has been awful for spring; rain and storms and serious winds and I feel sorry for the whole family really. It's surely not the spring they envisioned. 

Anyway I rang the wildlife hotline today and they suggested it might be as long as 3 weeks before baby can fly out of the yard. There's nowhere safe to relocate him to and I don't want to move it far enough that the parents can't find it so we're just kind of living with it. 

So for the moment dog and cat are confined inside and neither are impressed. Of course the dog gets walks and the cat has litter but both animals are electing to poop on the floor in protest and it's all a bit irritating really. Kitty is driving me demented but the thought of letting him outside to shred the baby is not something I can contemplate. He's confined to quarters until nesting season is done.

Temptation is to feed baby maggie (build it up faster), put shelter over it when it is sitting stupidly in the rain instead of getting under a table or a chair or a trampoline, or build it come kind of sophisticated flying machine to get the whole ordeal over with. 

But it's not my place to get involved; surely mum and dad magpie know a lot more about raising their baby than I do, so it's only for me to decide to either tolerate it or not. And it's a funny sort of exercise in detachment, which is why I'm sharing it here. I can't do anything to help the whole process other than leave them be and keep my killers inside. 

And it's all kind of cute (and annoying) and although it must sound so absurd it makes me think al-anon each time I get tempted to "do something". I know a lot of people wouldn't worry themselves over a baby bird but it's important to me so, we wait, and detach. And I like the fact that I don't feel embarrassed about doing what feels right to me where once I'd be mortified about what people might think...disrupting my household for a baby bird...I am who I am.

Anyway, off topic I guess but it makes me think al-anon so, there you go, lol. It's cute, anyway. Fingers crossed it gets strong enough to fly so it can poop all over my washing