Every year it begins anew – the Great Human-Magpie War. With one side drawing blood far more frequently than the other, at what point does retaliation go too far? I would argue that shooting down the enemy is definitely crossing the line.
When a cyclist complained to the Hills District council, she allegedly had no idea that ‘removal’ would mean putting a bullet in the poor bird. Honestly, cyclists and magpies should have some sort of pact figured out by now – both groups are pretty broadly despised by the rest of Australian society.
Whipping a gun out wasn’t the council’s first resort, they said they tried to trap it first, but it really shouldn’t have been their last resort either. Killing is wrong, y’all.
Frankly, it’s unAustralian and unsportsmanlike. If you’re not going to give the magpie a gun too, that’s not a fair fight. And believe me, that’s not the way we want this to go – I am already living in fear of the vengeance that the magpies will wreak upon us. They are incredible smart. We are inching closer and closer each day to an Alfred Hitchcock-esque apocalyptic reality.
It’s possible to befriend magpies, by interacting with them regularly and proving you’re not a threat to the nest. They recognise faces, so responding to a swoop with the sharp jab of an umbrella is going to make things worse in the long term.
Now there’s a whole Reddit board dedicated to visualising the threat that an escalation to this human-magpie feud could entail.
This is not a path we want to cycle down.