- Have you ever been swooped by a magpie? It can be both exhilarating and terrifying. Depending on your instinctual get up, you may want to fly, you may want to fight. When you really break it down, there is a lot more involved in the experience as a whole. Just appreciate the grand peripherals -of which you may or may not be directly conscious- it’s usually within the season of spring: crisp air, emboldening hugs from the sun, colourful blossoms, sweet aromas and your pent up energy from an oppressive winter. Unless you’re highly susceptible to hay fever then you’d be really keen to get outside, right? And so you do. You pump your tires, you let your hair out, you only do up two out of the five buttons on your shirt, you’re physically sensational and mentally buoyed.

The wind is in your hair, you’re carefree. You’ve filled your head with the latest EP from Muddy Chanter and you’re burnin’ it around town. Heart rate is is up a lil and you’re cruisin’, you’re confident and breezy. You’re smiling at strangers, that’s how good this whole experience has you feeling. Then, of course, you get swooped. Blind-sided. Coward-punched by a flap of feathers, talons and snappin’ beaks. Your whole thing, your whole being is thrown into disarray. You’ve bunkered down, your neck has sunken as low as it can into your shoulders, your mind has hit the alarm, assumed battle stations. Another Swoop. Whoosh! and with that, a heavy drop of adrenalin and you’re out of there, anxiety rising as the questions flood: Where the fuck is it coming from? Why is it attacking me? What did I do wrong? I only torment plovers, I’ve never teased a magpie. Do I have a reputation? Do magpies even hold grudges? Do birds even think? Why can’t nature just relax?! This whole time you’re picking up speed, you’re now terrorising the strangers, the ones you once smiled at and you’re entirely consumed by yourself and your projections, you’re asking the clear blue sky why nature can’t chill.

Once this has subsided, you’ve cleared the area and you’re now sweaty and panting and still a little sketched out. You weigh it all up, you become embarrassed with the idea that a seventy kilogram sack of muscle and cognition was just had by two-hundred grams of instinct and keratin. “An adult human was just panicked by a bird, how do I fix this?” you ask yourself. A different route? Zip ties on the noggin’? I should have a better relationship with the other beings of this earth. I should work on being one with nature. Then you flip it entirely, realising that it would have been rather hilarious to watch an adult freak out beneath the relatively benign attacks of your neighbourhood maggie.

Being swooped is a short lived experience with bursts of high energy and excitement, anxiety and reflection and it’s usually set against rather pleasurable surroundings. Being swooped is ultimately something to enjoy and to share with friends later on.

- NJR.