Plague Update #35

 Terrible news for the city of Melbourne already under lockdown due to the ongoing awkwardness with communicable disease.  For those who do venture outside, appropriately garbed in disinfectant soaked plastic and a jaunty face mask a new threat hovers over their heads, literally in fact.  Melbourne it would appear is under sustained aerial attack from the local magpies.  Decent citizens can't make it to the shops without sharp beaked terrors descending on them from the sky.

The problem is the masks apparently.  It turns out that magpies have their own version of facial recognition software (ie they recognise people) and with everybody wearing a mask the poor confused birds have decided that to be on the safe side they're just going to attack everybody.  To hear the media report it there hasn't been this much terror in the skies since stukas first appeared over Poland.  Those who must brave the increasingly dangerous outdoors apparently have to wear pillows on their heads or have broom equipped escorts.

This leads to two questions; the first is how long will it be before the population of Melbourne gives up on the outdoors entirely and decides to live a completely subterranean life?  Now we see the terrible shortsightedness of our politicians.  If only they had completed building that underground metro system then at least the population would have had somewhere to stretch their legs without having to fear death from above.  For the elderly of course many have embraced an underground existence already, its called burial.

The other question is even more disturbing.  If magpies can recognise faces (and apparently they can) and are only attacking indiscriminately because of the masks that means that prior to the pandemic every magpie attack was deliberate and specifically targeted at the individual involved.  What did these people do to piss off the magpies?  If we identify them and herd them out into the streets to face avian wrath will the magpies be appeased and allow the rest of us to go about our business?  Another question is given our facility for making animals extinct why is it that we don't seem to have been able to get rid of the ones that really annoy us?  Pandas, rhinos, dodos no problem but apparently our talent for genocide seems to fall short of magpies, rats and annoying little yappy dogs that jump all over you.  How difficult can it possibly be to wipe out chihuahuas?

This is more than an academic question.  At some point the magpies and chihuahuas are going to take pity on the remnants of the rhino and whale populations and share their secrets.  Then we're really going to be screwed because if you think magpie attacks are bad just wait until its rhinos and whales swooping down on us from the skies.  Pigeon crap is annoying and unsightly but a rhino is going to bury your car and then swoop on you while you're trying to dig it out.

When a COVID vaccine comes its going to be a very different world.  People will flit from cover to cover while rhinos patrol the skies.  Roofs will collapse under the weight of whales roosting in them and no doubt there will be protests in the streets as various idiots claim that the anti rhino vaccine is a violation of their sovereign rights.  Dark days are coming my friends if only because the rhinos and whales will block out the sun.