Not a Princess. Something More Powerful.
Let’s get one thing straight before we go any further. I am forty-three years old. I am divorced. My eyebrows are sharper than any winged liner you perfected in your twenties while squinting into a bathroom mirror under a single globe that flickered ominously. I am not, and I cannot stress this enough, a Disney princess. Princesses are sweet and passive and they wait for things to happen to them. I do not wait. I am chaos with eyebrows.
What I am, apparently, is a Disney goddess. The kind who does not need a prince or a castle or an enchanted forest. She just needs a balcony, a rainy afternoon, and absolutely no sense of self-preservation. Because a few months ago, a magpie landed on my balcony railing mid-downpour, absolutely drenched and unbothered by me, and instead of thinking oh, that’s lovely, I thought: what does it eat, and do I have any?
That was the beginning. That is always how it begins.
Two Birds, One Chaotic Woman
The magpie who came in from the rain became a regular. Then he brought a friend. Now there are two of them, a bonded pair, living in the tree directly opposite my flat like they pay rent there. One has a slightly lopsided beak, a permanent squint, and an air of someone who has survived a great deal and would like you to know it. His name is Squinty. The other one stood on one leg the first time I really looked at her and so naturally, obviously, her name is Hoppy. I didn’t agonise over these names. The names arrived. You don’t choose magpie names. Magpie names choose you.
I Googled obsessively before I put anything out, because I am chaotic but I am not irresponsible. Grain-free cat food, protein-forward, balanced for a carnivore. No bread. No mince. Not because I don’t love them, but because I love them enough to read fourteen wildlife forum threads at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday. Lulu watched me do the research from his spot on the bench, radiating the particular disdain he reserves for anything that isn’t directly about him.
The first time I held food out in my open palm and Squinty stepped forward and took it, something genuinely shifted in my chest. Not in a soft, weepy way. In an I have power way. A bird that could take out your eye on a bad day chose to eat out of my hand. Tell me that is not the energy we should all be cultivating.
Murder Birds Have Standards
Here is a thing about magpies that maybe only Aussies know. They are deeply particular. They have opinions. They are not grateful in the performative way we’ve decided animals are supposed to be grateful. They assess. They evaluate. They make decisions, and those decisions are sometimes baffling, and you simply have to respect them.
Squinty and Hoppy are most confident when I’m wearing black. They’re not wrong. I agree i look better in black too. But they’ll still come regardless of what I’m wearing, because at some point we moved past aesthetics into something more fundamental. They know me now. They know the sound of my voice. They know the particular rustle of the cat food container. Squinty lands first, always. Hoppy holds back, watching, until the situation has been assessed and cleared. It’s a whole system.
What gets me every single time is the singing. They don’t just show up and stare at me expectantly like Lulu does when it’s past five o’clock and he’s decided I’ve forgotten about him despite the fact that I haven’t. They sing. Perched on my balcony rail, they warble at me, this full, ridiculous, gorgeous sound rolling through the humidity and I am supposed to act normal about this? I am supposed to just go about my morning while two murder birds are serenading my balcony? Impossible. Absolutely impossible.
What You Learn from an Animal That Could Hurt You
There is a particular kind of trust that you earn from a creature that has every reason not to give it to you. Magpies are not soft. They are not designed for affection. They are designed for survival and they are very good at it. They swoop people. They have an entire season named after them as a warning. Most sensible Australians approach magpie season the way you approach a work email that starts with as per my last message. Carefully. From a distance. With a helmet if available.
And yet. Here is Squinty, lopsided beak and all, taking food from my hand with a precision that is honestly more controlled than the way I eat in front of my laptop. Here is Hoppy, watching me with one bright eye, tilting her head like she’s deciding something important. There is nothing quite like being chosen by something that had every option to choose fear instead. It makes you feel, briefly, like you’ve done something right. Not in a self-congratulatory way. Just in a quiet, solid way.
Nobody warned me that the most unexpectedly moving part of this whole situation would be the returning. Not the first time, not the novelty of it, but the fact that they come back. Every morning. Because they’ve decided I’m reliable. Me. A woman who loses the plot more days than she cares to admit, has gone hypoglycaemic at one in the afternoon because she was so fixated on a task she forgot to eat, and cries regularly over cute TikToks. Squinty and Hoppy have assessed the available evidence and concluded: yes, her. She’s the one. And I don’t know what to do with that except show up with the cat food* and try not to make it weird.
*I did try to replace the cat food with mealworms at one pint. Squinty was happy to test the new goods, decided absolutely not, and now that’s fifteen dollars I’m never getting back.
You Don’t Need an Enchanted Forest
If you’ve been waiting for your own magical woodland creature moment, I have news. It doesn’t happen in a sunlit meadow while you twirl in a gown. It happens on a rainy Saturday in a Brisbane flat while you’re still in your pyjamas, Googling can magpies eat grain-free cat food with the intensity of someone defending a thesis. Glamorous? No. Correct? Absolutely.
You do not need perfect conditions to build something meaningful. You need to show up consistently, offer something real, and not take it personally when the vibe isn’t there every day. Hoppy didn’t eat out of my hand straight away. She watched for weeks. I kept coming back anyway. And one day she just… did. She stepped forward and took the food and I tried very hard not to make a sound that would startle her, and inside I was completely unhinged with joy.
That’s the thing about choosing to care for something outside yourself, especially something that doesn’t need you to, especially something with a beak that could genuinely rearrange your face. You don’t get a certificate. You don’t get applause. You get Squinty warbling at your balcony door at seven in the morning because he has decided you are part of his world now, and the sun is out, and it is time. That is better than a certificate. That is the whole point.
We Need to Stop Clapping for Basic Decency – Chaos, Crumbs and Clarity
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