Authorities in Australia are warning people to be on the lookout for marauding magpies menacing people out walking. Its just another sign of spring down under according to them. The fools. It is another sign of the animal uprising. The feathered fiends wait for people to have their backs turned the – whap – they fit them in the back of the head.
SYDNEY (AFP) – Spring has sprung in Australia: the buds are budding, the birds are singing — and smacking into people's heads.
But Australians have been told officially, as they are every year at this time: "Don't panic!"
Most countries have a favourite indication that winter is over — a special flower perhaps, or the sleepy emergence of a cuddly hibernating creature.
In Australia the first sign of spring for a stroller outdoors can be a sudden blow on the back of the head by an angry magpie.
"There is no need for people to panic, but there is a safety risk and we want people to take care for just a few months of each year while these birds are nesting," government wildlife officer Glenn Sharp said Tuesday.
Taking care can take strange forms.
A common cartoon image of an Australian hat has it adorned with swinging corks to keep away the flies. But the best headgear at this time of year, some say, is an upside-down plastic ice-cream bucket with eyes painted on the back.
The magpies, large birds pre-emptively protecting their nests from harmless passers-by, always swoop from behind when their targets are happily gazing at some less startling manifestation of spring.
If you see them first and keep your eyes on them, they'll stay perched innocently on a branch or a wire, but staring wildly about as you stroll can look even sillier than wearing an ice-cream bucket on your head.
If you watch them, they leave you alone. Turn your back for an instant and you're a target. We suspect that their plot is tied to that tip the "experts" are giving. Wear an ice cream bucket to ward them off.
They are trying to make people look stupid!
