A rave about a raven

Crows are one type of bird you normally don't need to worry about hitting with a car.  They always scamper off the road and as such 'out of the road' avoiding collisions with heavy fast moving objects.  However a crow I saw on Australia Day 2012 seemed to be putting itself in mortal danger.  It wandered about in circles on the busiest highway in Australia not knowing where to go next and with little awareness of what vehicles were in the vicinity.  The reason for this was there was a take away cup 'caught' over the crows head and beak, which covered its eyes.  As I saw this, I wondered whether (i) I should stop and try and remove the cup and/or (ii) I should try and take a photo of this scene.

The next thought that came into my mind was it would be (a) difficult to remove a cup off a crow's head because I've never wrangled a crow in my life, (b) it could become agressive if I attempted to grab it, and (c) dodging semi trailers and cars as I tried to deal with the crow and its problems might endanger me.  I quickly realized to undertake the crow rescue safely would require in the very least a net, but I was bereft of a net.
Furthermore, I decided it was not ethical to take a photo of the cup on the crow if I wasn't prepared to try and remove it from its head and beak

So I continued on my journey wondering what fate would befall the crow, whether it would somehow manage to prise the cup off its head and if it didn't what would happen to it.  I also wondered how the cup became attached to its head - was it feeding on something in the cup and its beak pierced the bottom or was the cup somehow snuggly trapped on its head by just its rim?  (Later I ruled out human intervention re. the cup getting on the crow's head - as mentioned above, it was Australia Day, and I had somehow become caught up in the feeling of national euphoria, and as such believed my fellow countrymen were not capable of such avian malfeasance)

Sometimes I envied birds their wings and felt such apparatus that allowed most of their number to become airborne, a fair swap for upper limbs, hands and fingers.  But now I realized how important something to clasp something was and if I was armless and had a bucket stuck to my head, I would need the suppleness and flexibility of feet and legs or assistance from another to take away the view removing head gear.

A week later and I was still thinking about the crow on Australia day.  I remembered I had seen crows show a level of intelligence that allowed them to remove a bag of fantail chocolates from a golf bag, open the bag and then unwrap the chocolates. As such I became more confident that the crow escaped from the prison of the cup.  Maybe it was a metaphor for the Australian character - getting into trouble, but somehow through ingenuity and persistence, solving the problem.

Saga of the cock

“To sleep perchance to dream” – for me, in recent times, I would have been satisfied with “To sleep, perchance to sleep”.  Unlike some of my friends I can mostly get to sleep; the problem is then I re-awake prematurely with a mind full of stuff and at a different temperature to the one when I entered the land of nod.  Anyway, that is just background to a recent interrupted night of being horizontal, as when dozing off, a cockatoo made sure entry to sweet repose was temporarily barred.

There is a myriad of bird life in my neighbourhood and in the main I’m very neighbourly to these feathered friends.  I’ve learnt to recognize calls and plumage, as well as groupings.  I’ve made guesses at hierarchies and noted feeding patterns.  Seasonal fruit on trees has been left for anything with the ability to cling to a branch to help themselves to – no nets for me or ridiculous scarecrows.

But I do cross the line in the sand re. tolerance, as far screeching from a cockatoo at midnight is concerned.  While I lay awake and find these anomalous noises puzzling and muse at the avian motivation that underlies them, I feared they might go on for a significant period of time.  As it happened this instance of after-hours squawking must have worn Cockie out and it subsided, and apparently I fell asleep soon afterwards.

A very small number of hours later I awoke with a start.  Inside one of my nostrils – because of the tumult I can’t remember which one – I felt a strange feeling.  A tickling.  Like most tickling a faint pointed friction without decibels.  Quickly I was no longer supine, becoming in the blink of an eye, a fully participating biped again.  I turned on the bed light just in time to see a cockroach, not large but smallish, emerging from one of my nostrils.  Not being a flying insect it fell to the floor and scurried away as most of their brethren tend to do.  Foolishly it made a beeline, under a chest of drawers.  But there I’m almost sure it met its maker, gassed by liberal supplies of crawling insect killer, a brand Evonne Cawley once claimed in a TV ad “was kind to sensitive noses”.

Regaining whatever composure I could find, I blew my nose, resumed the attempt at shut eye, and wondered what motivates a cock roach to enter a nasal cavity.  As I lay down once more, my heart rate slowing and other metabolic processes hopefully moving into night time mode, I pondered the coincidence of the word ‘cock’ and how I had been kept awake and awoken by two creatures bearing this prefix.  A couple of days later, when rounding up a rooster and corralling him into his nocturnal hutch, I realized that in the past, I have been woken me up or kept me awake by two other types of cocks.