tales from the bird’s nest

When we relocated to Australia back in 2016, we were expecting a place brimming with evil spiders and poisonous reptiles. Our first encounters with nature were shy and circumspect, one cautious step at a time. Bush hikes were absolutely out of question but we were brave enough to face up some beach walks. With socks and high tops on, naturally. This was how our love for Australian fauna has started. 

My husband used to check online the name of every suspicious looking insect so to know how many years of life we would have, if bitten. Then we went on and bought the full range of sprays and devices against invasion of pests.

Then a young lady started visiting to give French lessons to our son and the topic of these terrifyingly big spiders named “huntsmen” randomly came up. We shared our sheer horror of the creature – sometimes as big as a palm! – but it quickly became obvious that the girl not only doesn’t share our sentiment but talks about them with fondness. She told us that it’s actually good to have them around, for they feed on insects and small reptiles (or mice), thus keeping the house clean from dangers. We were advised to buy a box with a lid and carefully use it to take outside all exemplars we might encounter. And so we did. 

From this day on we have gradually converted into People Who Don’t Kill Spiders. We somehow got rid of our half-superstitious, half-practical fear and haven’t destroyed a single being since then. Spiders, flies, centipedes, lizards – they all leave safe. Because you never know where God might be, they say.   

Once we freed ourselves from Arachnophobia, we approached our surrounding in a more balanced way and not long after we noticed that it is not the biting fauna that prevails but the feathery. Our garden alone hosts countless different bird species, and Australia in general has more than 900. We have King Parrots, Cockatoos, Magpies, Kookaburras, Noisy miners, Bush turkeys and Rainbow Lorikeets, all of them visiting daily.

It’s been two years since a pair of Lorikeets has claimed our porch for exclusively their’s. I’ve seen them thousands of times and I still can’t get over their amazing colors, cheerful chats and considerable intelligence. We bond really well because they, just like us, make connections for life and don’t have issues like toxic masculinity or gender inequality. 

It is interesting that only the male has the privilege of being able to grab and hold food with his leg while the female doesn’t have access to this particular skill but they don’t seem to be bothered.  No organisation takes care of this inequality, nor are there flocks of furious females, requiring compensation for the breach of their bird’s rights. Twice a year the mating season comes and the injustice gets even deeper. The male wouldn’t let his lady to feed and then would wander around alone and handsome while she’s brooding the eggs. I tried many times to introduce the female to the concepts of feminism and make her throw away the male despotism but to no avail.  She just abides the marital unrighteousnesses.  

The other day I told her that should she lived in the human world, she would have had at least ten non-profit organisations helping her fight for equal amount of brooding hours but she was just staring at me with tilted head, chattering something which I couldn’t quite understand. Archaic thing, I say. Completely natural.