Invaded!

I fixed the serried ranks of stuffed plush toys with a gazed filled with cold fury. 

"I am disgusted with the lot of you!  Our home has been invaded!  The sanctity of our domicile has been violated!  And what did you lot do?  Nothing!  Just sat there like a bunch of stuffed..." my voice petered away in embarrassment.

"Oh keep going," invited the puffin.  "Exactly what did we sit there like?"

"Look, I didn't mean,"

"Besides," interrupted the spider, "what did you want us to do?  Copy your example and leap onto the table squealing like a girl?"

"I was startled."

"So was everyone else within a five kilometre radius.  Do you know how penetrating your screams are?"

"Alright, look there are faults on both sides.  Let's just agree to keep a closer eye on the perimeter in future."

"Perimeter?  Do you mean the door?"

"Also the windows."

Yes there have been intruders in my little home.  Not once, not twice but thrice in the last couple of weeks a pair of Indian mynahs have found their way into my flat and they are showing disturbing signs of settling down.  On the occasions I have disturbed these feathery interlopers all of the cunning they displayed in entering my flat in the first place vanished and I had to watch them battering themselves to death on my windows until I got sick of the noise and opened a door.  The final straw came this morning when I was woken up by something walking on me.  Said something turned out to be the aforementioned mynah (or one that looked just like it) which managed to escape my shrieks of vengeance (or terror according to my stuffed animals) and flee the scene.

I'm normally pretty relaxed about animals wandering in and out of my house.  My two rules are "no shedding" and "don't shit on the carpets or, by extension, the furniture, benchtops, bookshelves and television".  The mynahs have broken these rules from the first day and so far show no signs of remorse.

Mynahs are listed among the world's 100 top invasive species (I'm assuming humans are pretty high up on that list as well) and seem to adapt to pretty much everywhere.  They even live in Canberra for gods sake which isn't something I would do if you paid me.  The latest place they are invading is my apartment.

Although they're called an "invasive" species it would be more accurate to state that they're an immigrant species.  They didn't turn up by chance.  As with most environmental accidents this one was largely self inflicted.  Mynahs were introduced into Australia in an attempt to control insects and other pests.  Seriously we've got to stop doing this, I'm not sure what we're going to have to introduce to control the mynahs but I'm suspecting that anything less than dragons would be a complete waste of time.  Meanwhile the mynahs revel in the nickname "flying cane toads" after another ill advised attempt at biological pest control.

While I wait for the dragons to turn up I seem to have little alternative to hermetically sealing my apartment and bidding goodbye to fresh air for the duration.  Multiple visits in a few weeks is obviously not a coincidence.  At this point the mynahs probably think, not without reason, that I will die before they do thus leaving them free reign to occupy my apartment as they see fit.  Meanwhile I'm organising my plush toys into an impromptu neighbourhood watch in the hopes that future incursions are driven off.  Given their poor showing to date I'm not particularly hopeful.