Man’s Best Friend? Or Duplicitous Dog?

It’s been a little while since I blogged; time is playing its usual trick where January has seemingly merged into June, while the four months in between decided to sit this year out. Some things have changed a lot – I’ve bought a house for one, part of the reason I have had a little less time to blog. Other things have changed very little: NSW have just lost yet another State of Origin Series where they seemed to dominate possession and field position and still somehow find themselves four tries down and two-nil in the series.

But the topic of this blog is animals, and how they cannot be trusted! I am not talking about the red-neck Donald Trump supporters or the QLD State of Origin fans. Though you certainly should never trust either of these groups, lest you find yourself with an assault rifle pointed, or in the case of a Maroon’s supporter, with an equally offensive “Queenslander!” shouted repeatedly in your face. No, I am talking about actual animals; specifically, my dog Buddy, as well as a manipulative magpie (surprisingly not a Collingwood reference here), both of whom played me for a chump over the last week.

Duplicitous? Who me?

Let’s start with man’s supposed best friend. Buddy is a three-and-a-half-year-old Border Collie who is a gorgeous looking dog, loves attention and gets extremely bored at home, wanting to be out and about. We try and get him out for a walk or run twice a day, but in between he tends to mope around. Last week, it was my youngest’s school athletics carnival, which happened to be a touch over a kilometre away from my house. I was working from home, so figured this would be a great chance to take Buddy for a run during my lunch break, drop into the carnival and watch Thomas’ race and then run home.

The first part went smoothly; Buddy and I ran to the field, him tugging me along all the while. We arrived in good time, he lapped up attention there from students, teachers and other parents while we waited for Thomas’ race. Thomas ran well, but it was on the way home when the trouble really started. See, as is often the way with Buddy, on the way out on a run he is all go, go, pulling at the lead, trying to race ahead. Only then he runs out of steam, and on the way back it inevitably is me dragging and coaxing him along.

So, I was not surprised when he started doing this; standard. But what I noticed this particular day was that the moment a car approached, Buddy was back out in front, leading the way, with only the ineptitude of his pathetic, struggling owner holding him back. But the moment the car was gone and out of sight, Buddy would slacken right off, and it would be back to me dragging him along. Could it be that he was posing to the cars passing by? I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it happened again with the next car, and then a third time. I started to suspect he was doing some serious peacocking, getting me to do all the work while alone, but acting like he was the one being held back whenever someone else was nearby. I mean, I expect this of certain humans, but was caught by surprise when my own dog tried to pull this one on me!

I should have perhaps taken more note of the rather rotund frame of this magpie before taking pity on its condition.

Fast forward a week and Renae and I were sitting at the Witches Falls Winery, enjoying a lovely afternoon of wine tasting and cheese consumption, on what is fast becoming an annual winter getaway. As the afternoon wore on, a few of the other tables had started to empty out, our triple brie was fully consumed with only a few wafer crackers left, and the magpies rolled in to see what they could scavenge. As a few picked at one of the recently emptied tables nearby, I noticed a magpie behind me balancing on a single leg and looking at me with pleading eyes.

My empathy for the bird immediately spiked, and I grabbed some pieces of cracker to feed it. As I turned to do so, I did notice that it was quite a rotund looking bird. I figured others, like me, had taken pity on its disability, and was heartened by its ability to thrive despite the set-backs life had thrown at it.

Only, as I put the pieces of cracker down on the sandstone block and drew my hand away, its second leg suddenly descended from where it had been tucked up among its feathers and it scurried forward on two, capable legs, and gobbled up the cracker pieces. The moment it had finished its meal, the leg was drawn up to its underbelly, disappearing among the feathers there, and it was back to being a poor, one-legged magpie.

This poor two-legged hack is still pondering why the other one gets thrown the lions share of the food.

I looked around at the other unashamedly two-legged magpies and noticed that all of them were considerably skinnier than this one. I was simultaneously impressed and incredulous that I, like others before me apparently, had been taken advantage of this cunning bird. Well played, I thought, though I made a point of sharing the remaining cracker pieces around more evenly with the other birds from then on.

The moral: animals are not always the cute, innocent creatures they often pretend to be, but are every bit as capable as humans at manipulation, peacocking and deceit. There is a fair chance they have learned these behaviours off us, fair to say, particularly politicians, bankers and Queensland’s State of Origin team. But none-the-less, be warned and throw your crackers sparingly the next time you see a seemingly single-legged bird begging for food, lest you be taken for a ride.

A view from Mt Tambourine. No deceitful animals in this pic. But they’re out there, just waiting to take advantage….