Just like a bird succumbing to a cat's swaying tail, all is not what it seems when you encounter Charlie and Betty Margulles' home in Griffith which fills with magpies on dusk every day. Cockatoos, crows, currawongs and crested pigeons gather along the gutters, fence tops, clothes line and tree branches like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.
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After 10 minutes or so, cats come single file over the fence to steal the birds' food. The Margulles have lived at their neat brick-rendered and tile home for nearly 60 years and are seeing more cats and fewer magpies.
"I've got these [birds] well trained to stay down the back of the yard," says Charlie, walking down the garden with a plastic bowl full of bread, broken crackers and meat, which he flings over the lawn. In no time 25 magpies are on the ground feeding and squabbling with one another. Later a smoky-coloured cat, long and lean as a downpipe and down on its haunches, sneaks in among the magpies, not to launch an attack, but to feed on the bread and scraps. This cat is starving. In time, two other cats come over the fence, then another one. They all scatter when Charlie bangs his bowl against his leg. But not smoky-slim. It stays put and eats and eats, it's head bobbing up and down from the food to give Charlie a defiant stare.
Cats are in the news lately, the subject of an SBS documentary on the devastation they cause to wildlife; loud meows from the strays and their kittens at ACT's RSPCA shelter; and former chief minister Jon Stanhope's support for a conservationists push to bring forward broader cat containment in Canberra. In the debate all views are being aired, including cats enormous social contribution to people, and the health benefits they bring as excellent companion animals. Among their allies, presumably, is the driver of an Audi spotted on Hindmarsh Drive with PATACAT number plates.
But in Griffith the problem does not relate to cats being killers – it's that Charlie and Betty are hurt at watching the cats spiralling hunger. To suggest to them not to feed the animals is to ignore their contented way of life over many years feeding magpies, until the cats appeared.
"They are all after the tucker, they are starving," says 81-year-old Charlie. "Rates are too bloody dear here," he says, taking a swipe at the government. "They are not worried about the cats, they know what's here." He says the RSPCA will lend him traps, but is unwilling to set them and care for the cats until they are collected. "You can't feed them all. Three or four of them are full of kittens. The night before seven cats were in the backyard."
On one moonlit evening the Margulles counted 20 cats sitting on the warm concrete driveway next door. "I don't like seeing them starve," says Betty. "It makes my heart ache for them. If people are going to have them, then feed them. When I was at work [years ago] I would come home in the old Valiant and 60 magpies would follow me up the road. As soon as I turned the corner into our street they would follow me. Visitors from South Australia said, 'why are the birds following you?'."
The Margulles once had two corgis, Matey and a knowing little pooch, Tissy, which had invited herself home after jumping into their car at Manuka one day and refused to get out. Now the corgis have gone, their life centres on the magpies. Charlie saw a crow join them one day, fearless of cats. "He'd grab them by the bloody tail."
"The cats are getting hungrier and hungrier, they will start chasing the birds," says Charlie. "Some of the older birds are as old as we are," says Betty.
A mushroom to top 25 pizzas, and the garlic says it is safe
Antonio D'Ambrosio✓ gently separated a four-kilogram mushroom from the base of a gum tree in a nature reserve in Deakin on Saturday morning, his mouth watering at the thought of tasty toppings they would make for home-made pizza.
Antonio visits favourite spots sprinkled across the ACT's bushland during wet autumns, where he has plucked numerous smaller mushrooms and the occasional plate-sized one from the soil, but not as grand as this four-kilogram whopper.
"When there is a lot of water, especially near pine trees, there are lots of mushrooms," he says. In Italy, where he grew up, the mushrooms had a hole in the middle and were ideal for barbecues.
His wife Giuseppena will slice up this giant and mix the pieces with salami slices. Antonio reckons there's enough mushroom for at least 25 pizzas and left overs for spaghetti sauce - just enough for the many friends who have invited themselves to dinner on hearing of his windfall.
ACT Health warns against picking wild mushrooms because of the death cap mushroom's tragic record in Canberra. The deadly poisonous fungus often grows near established oak trees, and is are found when there is warm, wet weather. In Canberra this usually occurs in autumn but there is no specific mushroom season, according to ACT Health's website, and no amount of cooking makes them safe to eat.
Antonio, a shoemaker by trade who came to Canberra in 1956, says the smell and the way garlic reacts with the fungi 's reaction during cooking indicates whether when a mushroom is safe to eat. If the garlic turns brown, they are poisonous. In 2012, two people died after eating death cap mushrooms in Canberra.
