blackbird pie and the broad bean emancipation

*Warning: contains reportage of violence*

The relics arrived home last night. One was in a foul twitch after visiting the vegie garden this morning. I’d been keeping an eye on things as instructed. I’d watered, I’d reinstated dislodged fencings. Unfortunately I’d failed to detect the uprooting of large swathes of newly planted (and in my defence, very tiny) broad bean seedlings. For which I felt due remorse … though this diminished somewhat during the unabridged, technicolour, all-singing, all-dancing screening of 101 Reasons Why Blackbirds are Bastards.

Blackbird wrangles are well entrenched here. But in a Tom and Jerry / Coyote-Roadrunner kind of way. (I’d never actually seen anyone use a slingshot, outside of cartoons, until arriving here.)

While ‘discussing’ the problem with fellow vegie gardeners in Melbourne, the unnamed relic was promptly furnished with air-gun and ammunition.

(Which are now, uncomfortably and probably illegally, in the house. But this is small fry...)

After this morning’s little fracas, Operation Blackbird Pie: The Broad Bean Emancipation, took flight.

Tacticians don’t appreciate the realities of advanced weaponry until they become groundsmen. I'm not going there, suffice to say it was not pretty.

The day ended with one enemy casualty – whose corpse now hangs in the apple tree as a "warning to others"… hello, UN War Crimes Tribunal? – and the complete moral depletion of the friendlies.

I can’t believe I’m related.