I don’t think there was any great turning point when Chad suddenly stopped being afraid of the
magpies or the magpies stopped being afraid of Chad. Maybe they just started getting used to each
other a bit more. As they did, Mom would hold Chad’s hand out with a piece of food, protecting it
from a wayward peck. Chad was surprised by how gently the birds took it—something he wouldn’t
have learned if he had allowed his fear to dominate. Discovering this, he felt a little more confident
to hold out a bit of meat by himself, and the magpies seemed a little more confident to come and take
it, gently. That big, pointy beak wasn’t used to harm him, as he had feared. As his mom explained,
their beak was like his fingers and mouth wrapped up in one. They used it to pluck the food gently
from between his fingers just like he might use his fingers to lift something fragile. I am not sure he
would have believed it if anyone had told him that the magpies wouldn’t hurt. Like with a lot of things
in life, it was something he needed to discover for himself.
As he went on feeding the magpies, he learned things about them... and things about himself.
At first, he thought magpies were magpies. He hadn’t learned to stop and notice the differences be-
tween them. Perhaps his fear had limited what he saw. When he began to take notice, some things
became obvious. He learned to pick out the adult males, who were distinctly black and white in their
colors. They were bigger than the females, whose backs were flecked with black-and-white patterns.
The young ones were gray and noisy, squawking constantly until food was poked down their throats,
and then they seemed to stop their noisy squawking only long enough to swallow the food before
they started to demand more. Chad thought to himself that he wouldn’t want to be a magpie mom.
It was usually the biggest and oldest male that came in to feed first. Chad could recognize him
because he had a bent leg with a knobby lump on it. Mom said she thought he might have broken
it. Because of that, Chad called him Pegleg.
One day Chad said to his mom, “I bet I could get Pegleg to stand on my hand and eat.”
“I bet you can’t,” his mom laughed, “You haven’t got the patience.”
Chad was determined and, when his mom said that about his patience, he was even more de-
termined. Each day afterward he would feed Pegleg, holding the meat in his right hand and keeping
his left hand, palm down, between the meat and the bird. At first, Pegleg would either hop over his
left hand or fly around to the other side of the balcony railing, avoiding Chad’s hand. It wasn’t going
to be as easy as Chad had thought, but he wasn’t going to give up.
He began to look away while he held out the food. This was because of something else he no-
ticed in watching the magpies. The younger magpies didn’t seem to like you looking at them while
they were coming to get the food. He tested it out: Stare them in the eyes and they keep their dis-
tance; turn your head away they pluck the food from your fingers. It is interesting what you notice
when you take the time to be patient, and Chad was being very, very patient, more than his mother
thought that he could be.
Riding his bike to and from school he would think about how he might tempt Pegleg to eat
from his hand that night. Maybe the hand had been too close to his face. He realized that, if he put
himself in the place of a magpie, the face is the danger zone. That is where their beak is, that is what
they attack with. If another bird attacked them, it would come from the face. Perhaps Pegleg would
feel safer farther from Chad’s face, like on his foot.
Chad sat in a chair and put his feet up onto the verandah railings, his legs stretched out as far as
he could make them. He held the meat out at full arm’s length and looked away. He wanted to watch
and had to discipline himself not to. It sure took patience, and several times Chad thought of giving
98 Healing Stories, Teaching Stories