This was me this morning!
In Australia, Spring is Magpie season. For those of you who don’t know what a magpie is, it is a bird. An evil, evil bird and in Spring I detest the little buggers (they actually aren’t so bad the rest of the year). They nest in Spring time so they become very protective of their little area of the world at this time of year. It’s the daddy bird that gets all crazy. No one is to be stealing his babies.
Now I get that. I don’t want anyone stealing my babies either but I need to ask, when was the last time a human even stole a magpie baby????? Did we do it in caveman times and they have simply never forgiven us nor forgotten the experience? What is with that overly defensive approach they have going on?
So like I said, Spring = magpies. Spring in Australia starts officially on 1 September and in my experience I’ve found the maggies pretty right on with their scheduling. Except this year. This year the little fucks are out early. FUCKERS. Sorry for the swearing but argh.
Last night we stayed down at Xman’s so Monkey could have his little mid week daddy visit and I thought right, I’m going to take advantage of this and head out for a run this morning while I have a babysitter right there. Running first thing in the morning is THE BOMB but it is an opportunity I rarely get as a single mumma. Apparently I can’t leave my kid at home alone at not quite 2. Besides the fact that it is against the law and probably constitutes child abuse there is no way he would be having it anyway. And he can’t come with me as, well, he doesn’t like to always go exactly where I want to go. And the running, I’m afraid, really is about me.
Anyway, running. So I took off this morning at 7:20am. The air was fresh and I was surrounded by mountains. It was quite the awesome experience and very different to my usual run. Normally I am running on a flat concrete bike track catching glimpses of the ocean so the rural scenery made a nice change. Today there was only a path on some of my run so I had to run on the dirt and the road and even had to take some hills. I was feeling pretty hardcore. My pace wasn’t quite as fast because of the FULL cross country experience but I was doing ok.
I had almost made it to the end – I had one 3 minute run to go and then my 5 min cool down walk. There was a mother of a hill in the last stretch but I was ok with it. I was psyched and ready to go. The run so far had been good and I was feeling really motivated. My little app chirped “Start running now!” and I was off. I rounded the corner into the estate and
SWOOP
The little fucker came down and swooped at my ponytail (mental note: tie hair in plait from now and and wear a hat on EVERY RUN FOR THE WHOLE OF SPRING). Dammit.
Apparently I can put these on my hat to make the maggie think I am staring at it
I was committed though. I kept running but started to wave my hand, carrying my smart phone, up and down over my head to put off the swooping bird. It seemed to work. After getting round the corner a bit I decided I must be far enough away from the stupid nest and stopped waving.
SWOOP. Again.
Nope still too close. I weaved to the other side of the road and started mumbling under my breath. Get away from me you little fucker. Stop it. Fuck. (I was on the verge of tears to be honest. These birds freak the living daylights out of me. Shhhh don’t tell anyone I’m such a wimp).
I hit the hill. The pace was getting hard with all the hand waving. How could I power my legs to RUN up a fucking hill when I was using all my energy waving my arms around like a crazy woman. Not only that but I was weaving back and forth across the road so I looked like a crazy woman with a death wish.
I turned around and saw the stupid bird sitting atop the sign where I’d left him. He must have been easily 50m down the road. Easily. I figured surely this would be far enough away. I stopped waving.
SWOOP.
Fucker. And I gave up right there. I got the arms just waving waving waving and walked (at a brisk pace mind you) up the rest of the hill. That stupid bird ruined my running stats. I was mad.
So that’s it. Welcome to Spring Australian’s. I hope it’s a delightful magpie season for you.
Hey I’ve been updating my Couch to 5k stats on a separate page that doesn’t publish a notification (just didn’t want to bore you all with the itty bitty details if that’s not your thing). Check them out if that sort of thing floats your boat. When you see today’s lousy stats then just remember it wasn’t me, it was the magpie + cross country terrain. The only thing missing was snow. Seriously.
