Coronation Drive, Toowong

I watched a gang of cockatoos play with traffic this afternoon. They were buzzing the corridor between the apartment towers and the river at Toowong; perching in treetops and on lampposts in twos and threes, calling and mocking with bombastic and ear-splitting jeering.

Then, on an invisible signal, one after another they would plummet toward the road: pieces of sky falling. Each bird would pull up just centimetres from a car’s roof, before soaring down the road with it a while.

I could see a couple of shirtless guys watching the game from their balcony, feet up on the rail, sucking on beers. They gave me a wave. On another balcony a man tracked the cockys with a fuck-off zoom on a tripod.

Almost obscene were the screams that rang ‘round the man-made canyon. Grinning on the path, I forgot what I’d been so worried about. 

After ten minutes or so the birds wheeled out over the river, and didn’t come back. Down came the rain.