I’ve always admired the magpie for its beauty and spite – so much so I got one tattooed on my arm | Patrick Lenton

SPring in Melbourne is announced by a feeling of relief – the painful cold has slowly exchanged two -digit temperatures, gray gloom juxtaposed by the sudden flowering of the ativet and other shiny flowers, and my seasonal depression attenuated by the beautiful view of cyclists carrying headsets covered with sweet wave and unfortunately ridiculous plastic trials.

Given that cyclists choose to wear the Lycra in public, it is clear that they already have a feeling of hard confidence and a trembling relationship with dignity – but new arrivals in our country must surely ask what could possibly have them to cover their hats in the ears with alcohol in bright and deadly colors.

But the answer is simple: the air wickedness of the fly season.

This has cursed the section of spring weeks during which the most dangerous fauna coat in Australia passes from our spiders and creeping snakes, or our aquatic sharks and crocodiles, to the terrifying monarch of the sky: Magpie.

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The season served is not a joke – I know people who have almost lost the eyes of a territorial bird, who presented themselves at deceased picnics and who bleed from the scalp. Around the Merri stream near my home, there are signs on all the paths warning to dive the Pies in the region, people rush through the danger areas, leaning and their eyes to the sky, like miniature ravages could descend at any time and spirest.

This is why a lot of people are confused when I tell them that I completely love Magpies. I love their monochromatic beauty (so classy compared to the coarse gorman aesthetics of the rainbow Lorikeet and its fellow men), I love the sound of their warble while I walk in the streets with twilight, and above all I like their commitment to avenge.

Years ago, I even obtained a Magpie tattoo on my arm, in tribute to the beauty and the spite of the Magpie – which was a difficult period for my family obsessed with Sydney Swans, who suddenly thought of my AFL agnosticism and declared for Collingwood (which they hate passionately).

I love the Magpies because they are not really violent at random – research has proven that they remember people and actually have grudge against those who hurt them, which I find incredibly relatable. I also remember people and I have grudge.

A retired man on a street on which I lived used to chase them from his garden every day and spray them with a pipe – and consequently, during the jump season, would live a harassed life, hostage in his own house, while I watched him rush from his front door to his car, constantly plunged by committed and dissatisfied magpies.

Once, in high school, I watched a single Magpie released a tyrant that I did not like and I move him away from the Nirvana from the handball field lunch.

I see a lot of myself in Magpies.

But I spent the last years of my life to live as a diplomat, trying to negotiate peace between the powerful nation of Magpies during the jump season, and the magnificent levry community without sip. Basil, my greyhound, is very interested in birds and thinks that he might like to chase them – that the Magpies regrets with a declaration of war. In order to negotiate a kind of truce, I spend the rest of the year trying to make friends with Magpies, which also had an impact on my own relationship with dignity. Now, I am the guy who walked his dog in the suburban streets of Melbourne, throwing tiny chicken handles cooked in the sky to soothe my winged friends, leaving small offers of crickets in heaps (which I have been told was better for wild birds than the chicken), taking the time to say “hello” to each magpie that I see their beautiful songs.

A few streets of me, an older woman saw me say hello to a magpie on her fence, and she went out to chat. Now, from time to time, I will pass in front and she will call to give me lemons or strands of rosemary from her garden. I can only imagine that if I had not been polite with her, a bit like a migpie, she would have remembered my face and held the lemons as part of her resentment.

Not only is there a lesson on the community here – which knows how many conflicts could be avoided if I launched insect handles to my hostile neighbor who hates my dog? – But there is also something gratifying to make friends with an animal that has the capacity to really mutilate you if you get started on its bad side. You make you realize that you have made good choices in life, gives you the impression that you have gained the right to walk in the streets and listen to the Magpies sing when the sun sets.