And I fell in love with the cockatoos. Such enormous things. So smart. You could see them sussing you out and thinking about stuff.
I fell in love with a cockatoo who I worked with for a day. Our boss was away and so my co-worker brought in his pet to work. Now, if I was at school with Mary and she'd brought her lamb, I'd be the kid vomiting from overexcitement, laughing and playing like a mad thing, to see a lamb at school. It just breaks up the monotony, right? An adult bringing in their cockatoo to work while the boss was away was altogether too delightful for even my shite memory to forget. I commandeered Ollie for as much time as I possibly could that day. I sat, working on a typesetting machine that seems now like it's something out of the 1890's even though it was 1987, while Ollie nibbled occasionally upon my ear.
It was a good day.
And so because cockatoos are so cool, I was a little curious about why my partner was so antagonistic towards them. What's there to hate, right?
Well, this, for example, done entirely at the hand - or beak, rather - of those gorgeous cockies.
I think cockatoos chew up stuff for pleasure, along with other practical reasons like beak-sharpening and cleaning purposes.
Wouldn't it be nice if cockatoos could be trained to mess only with wood that's not attached to your house. Like the masses of trees surrounding it, for instance. If I could become the cockatoo whisperer, I'd be in great demand amongst Australian house owners. Or if I could build a beaking post that cockatoos were insanely attracted to, that was painted in an environmentally friendly cockatoolian version of catnip, I'm pretty sure there'd be a market for that, too.
Nature is amazing in its resourcefulness and reuse and upcycling. Animals (including people, before Bunnings existed) use what's there in creative ways. And that's why one bird's pleasurable destruction has become (at least temporarily) another mammal's home. Take a squiz, a little closer.
See that greyish-lookin' thing? That's a bit of a possum.
Perhaps there aren't enough hollowed-out bits of logs to go around, and the last possum in for the night is stuck with the crappy digs, like a shitty, cheap motel with poo stains on the carpet. This is not the biggest of spaces - I've felt inside. That possum sleeping in there would be squashed. And it was hot last night. It sure can't be all that comfortable rammed in there with fur on top.
