Archives, eh
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# The Bird
We have a bird problem. Actually that is inaccurate. We have a rabbit problem. Then again, that is still laying the blame…not incorrectly – as the rabbit is still at least halfway to blame – but it doesn’t tell the whole story of culpability. The core of the problem is our accommodation. As in, we don’t own it.
Because we don’t own it, we tell the owners that the rabbit is an “outdoor rabbit”. Whenever the owners cross our threshold in order to wander about our home, inspect the condition of our belongings and draw a conclusion from such how we might be caring for theirs, whenever this occurs the rabbit is exiled to the far back corner of the “yard” [1]. It would undermine this carefully and (probably mutually) acknowledged lie if we were to then turn around and make allowances for the rabbit in the construction of the building. That is to say, why would we want a pet door installed somewhere if the rabbit doesn’t come in the house?
And we would like a pet door. Like other pets, the rabbit likes variety in her lazing. She wants to spend part of her day sleeping underneath the kitchen table – or next to the toilet – and part of her day sleeping outside in an arse groove she has invested no small effort in constructing. Being a silent animal she is not in a position where she can let us know when she wishes to pass between her duo-verses unless we are there in the room and paying a modicum of attention so we can see, for example, her hopping over to the screen door and sitting with her back to us, gazing outside at the grass like a cat spying a likely bird; an act that in the universal language of inter-species communication between slave and cat/dog/rabbit clearly indicates the desire to egress. It is more convenient to allow the rabbit to go in and out as she pleases. A pet door would allow that but since we can’t have a pet door, we tend to leave the screen door open with enough gap for the rabbit to squeeze through, a distance that is trending towards “wide open”.
This presents certain issues. This being Australia and especially this being a household that maintains a tray full of cat litter and hay for the rabbit to use as a combined toilet/kitchen – thus proving that rabbit technology is far ahead of ours – the open screen door also allows flies to come and go as they wish. With a definite and noticable preference displayed by these bugs for the ‘come’ part of the phrase and thus defeating the entire purpose of having a fly screen door. Eh, I can deal because I have chemical death for them. However, we also get larger avian pests tempted by the leavings of the rabbit. Minah birds. They just strut on in, even in the face of someone yelling at them with indignation, and pick over any food pellets the rabbit might have missed because sometimes she can’t see past her dewlap. It’s a less common occurence than it once once because we have altered the rabbit’s diet, giving her less food in the morning and making her pick over the grass in the yard. Last year it wouldn’t be unusual to have to shut the rabbit in- or outside because the Minah birds were flocking and encroaching with impunity, two or three in the yard taking turns to steal inside and forage for a quick meal. If you didn’t pay attention or didn’t hear the claws they might also go for a wander. I remember walking out to the kitchen one day a couple of years ago to find a bird on the sink top. I hadn’t heard it come in over the din of music playing but it certainly heard me and panicked, tried to go out through the window and then had to be herded towards the open door.
Yesterday D found one in the house for the first time in months and chased it out. And then discovered that the bird had gone exploring. All good explorers – those worthy of the name rather than just itinerants, wanderes and vagabonds – must be sure to ensure that their public know that they have been there. The best class of explorer does this via cartography and enumeration and naming of the landmarks and occasionally flora and fauna. The lower class of this explorer is in some ways difficult to distinguish from the aforementioned unworthies; this is the typo that vandalises the area to let those who follow know that Killroy woz there. The Minah bird, not having the digital articulation required for the kind of tools that cartography uses, and largely being limited to naming and enumerating it’s own tree must, by necessity thus fall into that latter category of explorer. The vandal.
From henceforth whenever I watch the 9/11 conspiracy episode of South Park I will know exactly how to answer Mr Mackay during his extended rhetorical questioning regarding the emotional reaction to finding, in any of one’s refuges, a dirty mud monkey. I would be angry. And annoyed. And I would google where I could purchase a pellet gun. Little bastards1 I feel compelled to use scare quotes because I just don’t feel right referring to 16 square metres as a yard. It takes me five minutes to mow that thing, and three of those are starting the mower.
