Smart Animals

Some solutions to animal problems work, but others don’t

My husband Ron and I live on an acre of ground adjoining bushland in Queensland. We are magpie lovers and feed some of these birds once a day.

A couple of years ago, after returning home from the supermarket, we drove into our garage and opened the door into the house. On returning to the rear of the car to unload the shopping, we saw a magpie standing about a metre away. It showed no fear of us at all and stood there as if it knew that we could help it.

There was a lot of fishing line tangled around one of its legs. I called out to Ron, who by now was upstairs, to bring a little bit of meat. While I hand fed the magpie, my husband managed to grab hold of it. I raced upstairs to fetch a pair of my small embroidery scissors and was able to painstakingly snip the twisted fishing line away. ‘Maggie’ had some difficulty walking, so obviously the fishing line had been there for a while. We placed a dish of water nearby and she stayed around for a few days, eating the meat we gave her and getting stronger. Each day we saw an improvement in her walking ability. Although she initially seemed very content to sit on a branch in one of our trees, after a week, she finally flew away home to nearby bushland. We believe the bird ‘knew’ us from a previous time. A while back we had fed a pair of magpies, and maybe she had once been one of their young. Needless to say, we were very pleased with the outcome.

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