The Cat and The Currawong

I heard only today about this hysterical, yet quite cunning story,

My friend has a really great little cat called Zuki, and she excels in the catching of mice. She is a fairly new rescue cat and has taken a couple of months to settle into this home, but to her credit, she has now become a fully-fledged mouse-catcher.

What is brilliant is the fact that she manages to reduce the mouse population by at least one mouse a day!

And with the ongoing current mouse plague ravaging Central Western New South Wales, people are a little nervous about what direction the mice are traveling in their search for new fields of endeavour; so every dead mouse is to be celebrated and represents a reduction in the mouse population, of potentially hundreds of mice after only a couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, Zuki has been in mouse heaven catching and killing the little blighters and then depositing them at her master’s exterior verandah door as little love gifts.

Well as is usual her master checks his verandah door each morning to see whether there were any more love gifts; and let’s face you cannot beat a dead rodent as a deep sign, token if you will, of love and affection.

Well, this particular morning Daniel opened his verandah door, and there lies a mouse; dead of course, so off he goes to get the dustpan and brush to dispose of this sad little carcass. He returns with the implements of removal when he sees to his consternation, that the mouse body has gone. It is no longer visible.

He looks everywhere but the mouse has completely disappeared. He definitely knew it to be dead, and also that the cat had done its’ job thoroughly. So, there is no playing dead here by said mouse; no when everyone has their backs turned, getting up and scampering off. There had definitely been a dead mouse lying on the mat next to the door

The next day unbelievably, the same thing happens again. Visible dead mouse gift one moment, and then in the next moment the dead mouse gift has disappeared!

On the third day, he adroitly positioned himself near the window so that he could view the odd, inexplicable happenings occurring at his verandah door.

Now, this is really quite incredible but it seems there is a big black bird, a Currawong, hovering around the vicinity of this verandah door. And cunningly, this bird has decided that it would be much easier to carry off the cat’s spoils rather than actually donning his pith helmet and to go hunting for mice himself.

So, what happens it seems is that this clever bird waits for the cat to catch a mouse and then after the ceremonial mouse presentation, it swoops in to make off with the prize while the cat’s master is off collecting said dustpan and brush. Warm rodent — yum!

Now if one could call a bird rat-cunning this would be the time. I also think this would be the time to say well if the cap fits!

The mice in Yass have not reached plague proportions but they are certainly a factor in daily life. I noticed that the shelves with the packets of mouse killer are diminishing on a constant, and that people are notifying re. the replenishing of said shelves and in which store the mouse killer is available. They appear to prefer the grain to be found on farms rather than moving into townships en masse. We hear that they are on their way to Victoria from Queensland. And it seems that the Central Western area of NSW is the worst hit. But unfortunately, Facebook public pages inform us that there have been some sightings on the outskirts of town. I truly hope that this is where they remain – on the outskirts.

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