One For Sorrow

We suffered a plague of hostile Magpies for two or three years in Kohimarama when my children were growing up and at one stage my young daughter became distinctly uneasy at the thought of going outside. Sinead was not generally of a nervous disposition but at six and seven years old she was on the small side and the Magpies, as with everything else introduced to New Zealand by enthusiastic early settlers had taken full advantage of an environment that was at odds with itself being both quasi-tropical and temperate. It was those self-same Pacific conditions that had allowed English Gorse to achieve the gigantic proportions that rendered it unrecognizable to the average Englishman and meant that the standard house rat had to be seen to be believed. The positive aspect of the massive Magpies at least ensured that Sinead’s previous dislike of irritating Mynah birds was put into perspective. The latter were certainly aggressive at times but a dive bombing Mynah was simply not in the same ballpark as a dive bombing Magpie. Her older brother also wisely kept his distance from them but was not as voluble as to why.

Because we were actively engaged in home schooling at the time of this scourge, like my father before me who did not have a similarly valid excuse, I used the situation as a tool for education. With what can only be described as missionary zeal and modelling myself on the La Leche League who were at the time preaching breast feeding with the same kind of fervour, I threw myself into the business of making sure that all available information about the feathered delinquents stalking the flat roof of the house and planning assaults should be made available to my increasingly alarmed students.

They were encouraged to learn the verse that all English children were undoubtedly still aware of…..One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl and four for a boy. Five for silver, six for gold and seven for a secret never to be told….. which mildly amused them. And we listened to Rossini’s overture La Gazza Ladra endlessly over a week or more which they didn’t seem to mind too much. This was years before the advent of the internet but it did not take them too long to discover that Thieving Magpies probably number among the most detested birds in the avian world and have consequently become attached to a raft of extraordinary superstitions. I was solemnly informed that the bird was the only one not to sing as Jesus died on the cross and was therefore immediately seen as evil. At a more practical level their habit of stealing and eating the eggs and young of other birds to supplement their diet did not win much support either.

Discovering that they have a natural attraction to shiny objects, a wide range of items was placed outside for them to choose from – pieces of kitchen foil, metal screws, glass beads and a silver ring bought years before in Portobello Road market. Predictably perhaps the only piece they selected was the ring, cherry picked and seeming to decide upon after circling it for several minutes, flying away then one of them returning to suddenly claim it. Sinead promised she would retrieve it just as soon as she discovered where our thieving trio secreted their horde but of course she was never able to do so. Seamus, predictably perhaps by then decided that what he wanted more than anything else was a pet Magpie and we determined that should he be able to somehow trap a chick he might well be allowed to keep it. There was not of course much chance of this but even so it was much to his father’s horror. This opposition went back to when he was a child in Oamaru in the South Island and a neighbour had somehow or other come by a pet bird that he was now sure had been a Magpie but possibly might have been a Jackdaw and either way he was terrified of it because it had a habit of pecking his ankles. The children assured him that their bird, should it ever eventuate, would be trained not to peck. Their father, still recovering from a range of animals he thought he had forbidden including a lizard called Eliza, a rat called Grendel, two rabbits called Enid Blyton and Beatrix Potter, and an angora goat called Cindy, looked doubtful. It would be true to say that he had an aversion to all feathered companions and sadly, most furry ones unless they were cats – of which we had three. He had not been a typical New Zealand child, always refusing to go to the circus because he decided it was dirty, even unhealthy. There seemed little likelihood under the circumstances that a Magpie might be slipped past him but Sinead told her brother not to give up hope because he worked long hours and it might be several weeks before he even noticed.

Meanwhile I was recalling the antics of the belligerent bird kept by Old Mrs Yates who at one time lived next door to one of my Crayford aunts. It was said to have arrived on the scene when Cyril her husband died and to make ends meet she had taken in a lodger called Dan who worked at Vickers and was said to be a sober, church going bachelor. There was the standard confusion as to whether his feathered companion was a Magpie or a Jackdaw but what nobody argued about was that it was a Spiteful Blighter and somebody should wring its neck. It spent most of its time tethered by one scrawny leg to the chair Dan sat on at dinner time, poised to peck each passer-by. In the summer time Dan moved his chair outside onto the street so that the bird could exhaustively amuse itself with attacks on passing children heading for the shop that sold raspberry and lime Ice Suckers. He said its name was Mary and it meant no harm because it was merely playing a game.

Within a short space of time Old Mrs Yates together with Dan and Mary became even more unpopular than Flash the Alsatian who lived opposite my aunt and had an equally alarming habit of hurling himself at the gate each time someone dared to pass. His owner said it was because he was named after Flash Gordon and just couldn’t help himself and if you stood your ground he would do you no harm. Of the two aggressors I was possibly more intimidated by Mary. My Aunt told my mother that there was more to the house next door than met the eye and she was convinced there was Hanky Panky going on because apart from anything else you could hear it through the bedroom wall on Sunday afternoons and she thought it ought to be reported to the Council. My mother said that at her age, and she must be sixty if she was a day, Mrs Yates should be past all that but my Aunt said No, she wasn’t and they were at it like rabbits. The reference to rabbits was perplexing to a six year old so I mentioned it to my cousin Margaret who was thirteen – were Mrs Yates and Dan at it like rabbits? She looked horrified and said I shouldn’t say such things so I didn’t say it again but I still would have liked an answer.

Not very long after this exchange Mary the Magpie pecked my cousin Violet’s leg one Sunday morning as she passed on her way to the shop for two ounces of loose tea. Violet didn’t take kindly to the attack and rushed back to report the incident knowing very well that Old Nan wouldn’t take kindly to it either. This resulted in a great deal of what was generally termed Argy Bargy with threats and raised voices and Dan the lodger being told that he’d feel the back of Nan’s hand if her Violet, Poor Motherless Little Mite, ever had cause to complain again. Later it became common knowledge among first my aunts and then the rest of the street that although Dan was generally sober and sometimes went to church, a bachelor he was not because he had two wives, one in Wolverhampton and one in Norwich both of whom had thrown him out because they couldn’t abide Mary the Magpie.

Not long after that there must have been a complaint to the Council because Mrs Yates suffered the ignominy of an eviction notice which normally you only got if you didn’t pay your rent or if you punched holes in the wall when you were drunk and were unlucky enough to be found out. My mother said it was on account of the bird but that couldn’t have been correct because there was no regulation stipulating that you couldn’t keep pets and even antagonistic ones like Flash were tolerated. Either way Aunt Mag maintained that although she was glad to see the back of them, the eviction was nothing to do with her and she had better things to do with her time than report people to the Council.

Once they moved on and were replaced by a family with four girls and two canaries, my Grandmother found herself in a better frame of mind about neighbours who kept birds though she said that Magpies were said to have drunk the blood of Satan and were therefore best avoided. It was terrible bad luck, she said, to have one hover above your house because it meant a death was about to happen but on the other hand if you should be on your way to a wedding and happen to see three of them that meant the couple about to be wed would have a happy future. And if you suffered from fits and could bear to catch one and eat it, you would be cured of that affliction at once, nothing was surer. This is something I might have paid heed to myself when later in life I developed Epilepsy but by then it had slipped my mind.