Aunty Glad’s cockie. And other birds. Expletives not deleted.

At home on the deck

For those who don’t understand Australian slang, a “cockie” is a cockatoo, and in this case a Sulphur Crested Cockatoo.  (It could also mean a farmer, but I’m not going into that here!)

Cockies are renowned for screeching, being destructive, and sometimes learning to talk.  When we lived in a previous house, there was a large flock of wild cockies which circled the area, and in amongst the very loud screeching, we could regularly hear one voice saying “hello cockie”!  Presumably someone’s domestic pet had escaped, and joined the wild flock.

We have a number of native birds that visit our current home.  When the drought was really bad, we would put out seed on the bird feeder, and we noticed a definite “pecking order”.  The crimson rosellas would chase off the eastern rosellas, the galahs would chase the crimson rosellas, then the sulphur crested cockatoos would chase off the galahs!  Basil the beagle and Jasper the Belpie would happily ignore any birds, until the cockies started coming in.  Then Jasper (see Obituary for a dog, June 2014) would loudly voice his objection, and chase them off.

Now to Aunty Glad’s cockie.  Aunty Glad was actually my great-aunt, and she lived with her second husband, Uncle Tommy.  There was endless fascination when visiting Aunty Glad and Uncle Tommy, not least of all because Uncle Tommy, who always seemed to me to be smiling and cheerful, had been in the merchant navy, and was covered in tattoos.  Fascinating to all the kids!

Then there was Cockie (I can’t remember any other name).  Now it seems to have been traditional when teaching a bird to talk, to teach phrases like “hello cockie”, “pretty boy”, and other innocuous things.   Sometimes there was a snatch of a popular tune whistled.

Not so with Cockie.  On going up to his cage, we would be treated to “Tommy’s pissed again, Tommy’s pissed again, piss off Tommy!”  I gather that Aunty Glad and Uncle Tommy both liked a drink, or two, or three.  I only remember adults having cups of tea while visiting, but it became clear that at other times Cockie was witness to loud arguments, sprinkled with quite a few choice expletives.  Once a cockie has learned something, you can’t shut it up, so we kids had quite an education in generally impolite language, although we worked out pretty quickly that for us, repeating it brought adverse consequences!

There became a favourite family story of the new girlfriend who was being introduced to the family, and who walked up to Cockie’s cage, saying “hello cockie” and “pretty boy”.  Cockie then shrieked “Piss off, you bastard!”  Oops.