A harmless garden visitor soon evolved into a full-blown household dictator.
It all started innocently enough. A youngish wagtail fluttered into my garden, hopping about with its chest puffed up like it owned the place.
Cute, I thought. Quaint, I thought. How wrong I was.
By day two, the wagtail had moved from the sparse lawn to the stoep on the side of my house.
By day four, it was strutting through the lounge like a tiny general inspecting its troops.
By the end of the week, it had taken over the Wi-Fi. I kid you not.
You see, wagtails don’t just wag their tails. I now realise that their wagging is intimidation – the avian version of humans cracking knuckles.
Every time I tried to reclaim my wingback chair, there it was: wag-wag-wag.
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As if to say, “Move along, human, this is my Netflix seat now.”
Soon, the bird was dictating house rules. No noise after 7pm and that includes any type of music. Curtains open at sunrise.
All windows ajar for quick access. Ample crumbs left on the kitchen counter deliberately.
And heaven help me if I dared vacuum – the wagtail would perch on the curtain rail and scream bloody murder until I stopped.
My one and only carpet looks… well, atrocious. Visitors? Forget it.
My friends stopped coming around after one was dive-bombed for sitting in the wagtail’s favourite chair.
Some think I trained the feathered fiend to attack them deliberately.
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Others think it is a phase I’m going through, one featuring a rescued bird.
Even Cody, the toothless old dog gave up, resigning himself to a corner cushion, too scared to challenge the winged tyrant.
And the audacity. The wagtail began building a nest on top of my kettle.
My new kettle! “Temporary,” I told myself. But when it started rearranging the lounge décor – dragging bits of string and fluff around to “improve the ambiance” – I realised I was no longer the homeowner.
I was the tenant. Rent-free bird, rent-paying human. How did this happen? The final straw?
One morning I found a yellow sticky note on the fridge (I swear I don’t know how the bird wrote it, and I don’t own sticky notes) that read: “Milk running low. Get fresh breadcrumbs. PS. Wag faster when you clean.”
I knew then: I had lost the battle. My house wasn’t my house any more. It was the Republic of Wagtailia and I was just the live-in janitor.
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