Spring in Melbourne is heralded by a sense of relief - the aching cold slowly swapped for temperatures in the double digits, the grey gloom juxtaposed by the sudden blooming of wattle and other brilliant blossoms, and my seasonal depression alleviated by the beautiful sight of cyclists wearing helmets covered in gently waving and unfortunately ridiculous plastic tentacles.
Considering cyclists choose to wear Lycra in public, it's clear that they already have a rock-hard sense of confidence and a shaky relationship with dignity - but newcomers to our country surely have to wonder what could possibly possess them to cover their hats in brightly coloured and lethal-looking spikes, like an unholy union between The Wiggles and a Mad Max movie.
But the answer is simple: the aerial malice of the magpie swooping season.
That cursed stretch of spring weeks in which the mantle of Australia's most dangerous fauna switches from our ground-crawling spiders and snakes, or our aquatic sharks and crocodiles, to the terrifying monarch of the skies: the magpie.
Swooping season is no joke - I've known people who have almost lost eyes from a territorial bird, who have turned up to park picnics bewildered and bleeding from the scalp. Around the Merri Creek near me, there are signs on all the paths warning of swooping magpies in the area, people scurrying through the danger zones, hunched and with their eyes to the sky, like miniature raptures might descend at any moment and spirit them away.
Which is why a lot of people get confused when I tell them I utterly adore magpies. I love their monochromatic beauty (so classy when compared to the crass Gorman aesthetic of the rainbow lorikeet and its ilk), I adore the sound of their warble as I wander the streets at dusk, and above all I love their commitment to revenge.
Years ago I even got a magpie tattoo on my arm, as a tribute to the beauty and spite of the magpie - which was a trying time for my Sydney Swans-obsessed family, who thought I'd suddenly left my AFL agnosticism and declared for Collingwood (who they hate passionately).
I love magpies because they are not actually randomly violent - research has proved that they remember people, and actually hold grudges against those that have done them wrong, which I find incredibly relatable. I too remember people, and hold grudges.
A retired man on a street I used to live on used to chase them out of his garden every day and spray them with a hose - and as a result, during swooping season would live a harried life, hostage in his own house, as I watched him scurry from his front door to his car, swooped incessantly by committed and spiteful magpies.
Once, in high school, I watched a magpie single out a bully I disliked and drive him away from the lunchtime nirvana of the handball courts.
I see a lot of myself in magpies.
But I have spent the last few years of my life living as a kind of diplomat, trying to broker peace between the mighty nation of magpies during swooping season, and the gorgeous yet gormless greyhound community. Basil, my greyhound, is very interested in birds, and thinks that he might like to chase them - which the magpies regretfully see as a declaration of war. In order to broker some kind of truce, I spend the rest of the year attempting to make friends with magpies, which has also impacted my own relationship with dignity. Now I'm the guy walking his dog around suburban streets in Melbourne, throwing tiny handfuls of cooked chicken into the sky to appease my winged friends; leaving little offerings of crickets in piles (which I was told was better for wild birds than chicken); taking time to say "good morning" to every magpie I see; loudly admiring their beautiful songs.
A few streets down from me, an older lady saw me saying hello to a magpie on her fence, and she came out to have a chat. Now, every so often I'll walk past and she'll call out to give me lemons or sprigs of rosemary from her garden. I can only imagine that if I hadn't been polite to her, much like a magpie, she would have remembered my face and withheld lemons as part of her grudge.
Not only is there a lesson about community here - who knows how many conflicts could be avoided if I threw handfuls of insects at my unfriendly neighbour who hates my dog? - but there is also something rewarding about making friends with an animal who has the capacity to truly maim you if you get on their bad side. Makes you realise you've made some good choices in life; makes you feel like you've earned the right to stroll the streets and listen to the magpies singing as the sun goes down.