Gerald Durrell - My family and other animals

'Exercise 1' exclaimed Larry. 'I suppose you'll call it exercise when they're flapping round the house with hundred drachma notes in their filthy beaks.'

I promised faithfully that the magpies should not, in any circumstance, be allowed to steal. Larry gave me a withering look. I pointed out that the birds had still to be named, but nobody could think of anything suitable. We stood and stared at the quivering babies, but nothing suggested itself.

'Whats you goings to do with them bastards?' asked Spiro.

Somewhat acidly I said that I intended to keep them as pets, and that, furthermore, they were not bastards, but magpies.

‘Whats you calls them?' asked Spiro, scowling.

'Magpies, Spiro, magpies,' said Mother, enunciating slowly and clearly.

Spiro turned this new addition to his English vocabulary over in his mind, repeating it to himself, getting it firmly embedded.

'Magenpies,' he said at last, 'magenpies, eh?'

'Magpies, Spiro,' corrected Margo.

'Thats what I says,' said Spiro indignantly, 'magenpies.'

So from that moment we gave up trying to find a name for them and they became known simply as the Magenpies.

By the time the Magenpies had gorged themselves to a size where they were fully fledged, Larry had become so used to seeing them around that he had forgotten their allegedly criminal habits. Fat, glossy, and garrulous, squatting on top of their basket and flapping their wings vigorously, the Magenpies looked the very picture of innocence. All went well until they learnt to fly. The early stages consisted in leaping off the table on the veranda, flapping their wings frantically, and gliding down to crash on to the stone flags some fifteen feet away. Their courage grew with the strength of their wings, and before very long they accomplished their first real flight, a merry-go-round affair around the villa. They looked so lovely, their long tails glittering in the sun, their wings hissing as they swooped down to fly under the vine, that I called the family out to have a look at them. Aware of their audience, the Magenpies flew faster and faster, chasing each other, diving within inches of the wall before banking to one side, and doing acrobatics on the branches of the magnolia tree. Eventually one of them, made over-confident by our applause, misjudged his distance, crashed into the grape-vine, and fell on to the veranda, no longer a bold, swerving ace of the air, but a woebegone bundle of feathers that opened its mouth and wheezed plaintively at me when I picked it up and soothed it. But, once having mastered their wings, the Magenpies quickly mapped out the villa and then they were all set for their banditry.

The kitchen, they knew, was an excellent place to visit, providing they stayed on the doorstep and did not venture inside; the drawing-room and dining-room they never entered if someone was there; of the bedrooms they knew that the only one in which they were assured of a warm welcome was mine. They would certainly fly into Mother's or Margo's but they were constantly being told not to do things, and they found this boring. Leslie would allow them on to his window-sill but no farther, but they gave up visiting him after the day he let off a gun by accident. It unnerved them, and I think they had a vague idea that Leslie had made an attempt on their lives. But the bedroom that really intrigued and fascinated them was, of course, Larry's, and I think this was because they never managed to get a good look inside. Before they had even touched down on the window-sill they would be greeted with such roars of rage, followed by a rapidly discharged shower of missiles, that they would be forced to flap rapidly away to the safety of the magnolia tree. They could not understand Larry's attitude at all; they decided that - since he made such a fuss - it must be that he had something to hide, and that it was their duty to find out what it was. They chose their time carefully, waiting patiently until one afternoon Larry went off for a swim and left his window open.

I did not discover what the Magenpies had been up to until Larry came back; I had missed the birds, but thought they had flown down the hill to steal some grapes. They were obviously well aware that they were doing wrong, for1 though normally loquacious they carried out their raid in silence and (according to Larry) took it in turns to do sentry duty on the window-sill. As he came up the hill he saw, to his horror, one of them sitting on the sill, and shouted wrath-fully at it. The bird gave a chuck of alarm and the other one flew out of the room and joined it; they flapped off into the magnolia tree, chuckling hoarsely, like schoolboys caught raiding an orchard. Larry burst into the house, and swept up to his room, grabbing me en route. When he opened the door Larry uttered a moan like a soul in torment.

The Magenpies had been through the room as thoroughly as any Secret Service agent searching for missing plans. Piles of manuscript and typing paper lay scattered about the floor like drifts of autumn leaves, most of them with an attractive pattern of holes punched in them. The Magenpies never could resist paper. The typewriter stood stolidly on the table, looking like a disembowelled horse in a bull ring, its ribbon coiling out of its interior, its keys bespattered with droppings. The carpet, bed, and table were a-glitter with a layer of paper clips like frost. The Magenpies, obviously suspecting Larry of being a dope smuggler, had fought valiantly with the tin of bicarbonate of soda, and had scattered its contents along a line of books, so that they looked like a snow-covered mountain range. The table, the floor, the manuscript, the bed, and especially the pillow, were decorated with an artistic and unusual chain of footprints in green and red ink. It seemed almost as though each bird had overturned his favourite colour and walked in it. The bottle of blue ink, which would not have been so noticeable, was untouched.

'This is the last straw,' said Larry in a shaking voice, 'positively the last straw. Either you do something about those birds or I will personally wring their necks.'

I protested that he could hardly blame the Magenpies. They were interested in things, I explained; they couldn't help it, they were just made like that. All members of the crow tribe, I went on, warming to my defence work, were naturally curious. They didn't know they were doing wrong.

'I did not ask for a lecture on the crow tribe,' said Larry ominously 'and I am not interested in the moral sense of magpies, either inherited or acquired. I am just telling you that you will have to either get rid of them or lock them up, otherwise I shall tear them wing from wing.'

The rest of the family, finding they could not siesta with the argument going on, assembled to find out the trouble.

'Good heavens! dear, what have you been doing ?' asked Mother, peering round the wrecked room.

'Mother, I am in no mood to answer imbecile questions.'

'Must be the Magenpies,' said Leslie, with the relish of a prophet proved right. 'Anything missing?'

'No, nothing missing,' said Larry bitterly; 'they spared me that.'

"They've made an awful mess of your papers,' observed Margo.

Larry stared at her for a moment, breathing deeply.

'What a masterly understatement,' he said at last; 'you are always ready with the apt platitude to sum up a catastrophe. How I envy you your ability to be inarticulate in the face of Fate.'

'There's no need to be rude,' said Margo.

'Larry didn't mean it, dear,' explained Mother untruthfully; 'he's naturally upset.'

‘Upset? Upset? Those scab-ridden vultures come flapping in here like a pair of critics and tear and be-spatter my manuscript before it's even finished, and you say I'm upset}7

'It's very annoying, dear,' said Mother, in an attempt to be vehement about the incident, 'but I'm sure they didn't mean it. After all, they don't understand . . . they're only birds.'