Okay, to make my experience dealing with animals more colourful, now I can finally add this morning’s episode into my history of harassment, or say the history of being harassed by animals.

This morning when I was on the way to work, I confronted a very badly-behaviour magpie on the pedestrian sidewalk. This horrible black and white bird attacked me at least 3 times. The first round of his attack happened at the time when I wasn’t so prepared, so I only felt a strong breeze above my head when he was hovering and passing by. Part of my hair got lifted a bit as I can feel it.

Then the second round was even worse. I can feel this magpie was very aggressive and tried to knock me down with his sharp pointing mouth, which made me start to get really cranky. I began to look for a “weapon” but couldn’t see a more appropriate one than a slender falling tree branch. I picked up and prepared myself for further attack.

There he came…the third attack. I madly waved my arms holding my poor weapon to fight back and all my body got engaged with awareness of self-defence. He ran away, left me cold-sweated all over. Gee, what this sort of attack was about? I just walked my way and he should have his own. Why did he do this to me? I just couldn’t believe what had just happened.

It only lasted no more than 30 seconds. Mind you the scientists say that magpies are very intelligent animals and can even imitate the human voice like parrots. But the experience of confront them really put me off liking them. They behave badly and I have made up my mind, if they are coming to attack me again next time, I am going to do whatever it takes to destroy them, believe it or not!

But I couldn’t go back to imagine how I did today. To other people who might have seen me on the street this morning, my image that had been passed on was pretty much no different than a loony who waved her arms in the air and shaking her head crazily with all hair going like a jungle. My God, that was me going crazy…fighting with a bird

But you might be interested in knowing the following facts about kind of bird who’s been seen everywhere in Canberra and Queanbeyan, even across Australia.

• Many of us have childhood memories of aggressive magpies, and indeed, a national survey has found that 90 per cent of males and 72 per cent of females have been attacked by a magpie at some time in their life! My husband had this sort of experience before.
• Magpies are only aggressive for six weeks of the year, around August/September, when they have chicks in the nest. Oh too bad, now is right the time.
• Most magpies attack the same few individuals again and again, possibly because they remind the bird of someone who once hurt them. My God, why did they pick me? I didn’t do anything to them in the past! My concern is “would this happen again on me?”
• Only the males attack (the females are too busy sitting on the eggs). And the data shows that of 59 magpie attacks, the eye was the birds’ most common target. So I am lucky that I still have my eyes in place.
• Magpies seem to get particularly infuriated by bicycles: nearly half of those attacked were riding a bike at the time. But delving further into the ISIS data, they find that almost two thirds of the magpie victims were male, and half of all those attacked were aged between 10-30. Obviously magpies are selective! Look, magpie, you have mistakenly calculated about me. I am female and I am over 30 years old. I am walking and I am not the one you were looking for.
• Magpies are excellent mimics and can even imitate the human voice. I heard that they can even recognise the same person even if they are dressed in another colour of clothes. I think I really need to disguise myself well next time

Have you ever been attacked by magpies before? More information about magpie attact, maybe you want to check this one out.