THE NAKED CITY – WHEN FEATHERED FRIENDS ATTACK!

There’s a famous Charles Addams strip cartoon of a guy feeding pigeons whilst sitting on a park bench. He starts off with just a few peckish scavengers but gradually hundreds of birds descend, eventually covering every part of his body. In the final frame they have all flown away and only a skeleton remains! It’s a prophetic comment as already America is feeling the wrath of its native and feral wildlife as raccoons, rats, bears, moose and even the occasional alligator in the sewer, invade the urban environment. It might not be the chickens, but just about everything else is coming home to roost.

It’s a scenario that American writer Mike Davis paints graphically in his cataclysmic account of modern LA, Ecology OF Fear, as the urban sprawl fights off attacks from wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, bobcats and raptors. As Davis puts it:

“In times of ecological crisis and spiritual disorder, these creatures are omen bearers and, when necessary the avengers of transgressions against nature.”

Sydney – look out! Already sightings of a giant feline or panther have become commonplace in the greater Hawkesbury and Lithgow areas and the day is near when, hot in pursuit, the first over eager cryptozoologist falls victim. But it’s much closer to the built up concrete, traffic-infested epicentre where we should be parking our peepers. In recent months a gang of marauding white cockatoos have laid claim to the leafy environs of Elizabeth Bay, screeching outside the windows of high-rise apartments until they are rewarded with a tit-bit or the rebuttal of a feather duster, tearing up expensive rooftop insulation and terrorising both poodles and their walkers in the park.

Meanwhile in the naughty but nice strip of Darlinghurst Road, a group of nocturnal seagulls have established their own unique culinary precinct. Where they disappear to during the day is anybody’s guess and it’s unlikely that they have ever seen the sea – for at night the strip is rich in the pickings of fast food carnage – everything from a half eaten kebab to a juicy pile of freshly exuded vomit. It’s only a matter of time before some poor unfortunate drunk, blissfully slumped in a shop doorway, is given the Charles Addams treatment by a pack of these ravenous killer gulls.

Yet there is really no need to be alarmed. Any kind of counter insurgency when it comes to combating the inevitable that rats, mice, cockroaches, possums and the long beaked ibis will eventually reclaim the planet, is doomed. So forget about hunting the bats out of the Botanic Gardens or stopping the pigeons from making Pollock-style action paintings on the bonnet of your parked car – we have all seen what happened in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds! It’s time to embrace the words of Mike Davis when he writes that “the wild urban ecotone…can be best envisioned as an ecosystem in its own right, albeit more dynamic, nonlinear and unstable than its constituent communities.”

And if that means turning some of our grander open spaces into Sydney’s version of Venice’s St Mark’s Square, where the pigeons are a bigger attraction than the surrounding Italian Renaissance Architecture – we are all for it!  Gilligans Island, Town Hall Square, the Opera House forecourt, Tumbalong Park, the Domain – just imagine, a moving tapestry of ten thousand pigeons, seagulls and cockatoos pecking their way through a daily provision of Council supplied rations. Just keep a firm grip on your kids, your designer dog or your elderly mother.

THE HIT LIST:

• Jazzgroove presents The Jay Miller Group and The Space Cadets – Tuesday 8 September – Excelsior Hotel 8.30pm  – Foveaux Street’s Excelsior Hotel is home to Jazzgroove on Tuesday nights with two highly creative young combos playing super cool music in a hip and cosy vibe.  Details at www.jazzgroove.com

• “Black Mama” – Latin American Film Festival at Mu-Meson Archives – Saturday 12 September 7.30pm – A special screening at the Archives of the Ecuadorian surrealist extravaganza Blak Mama inspired by the traditional Ecuadorian celebration of La Mama Negra. Check out the full Latin American Film Festival programme at The Dendy Opera Quays and Casula Powerhouse at sydneylatinofilmfestival.org

• Nadene Pita Album Launch – Saturday 19 September 8pm – The Stone Gallery (Paddington Uniting Church) – Nadene Pita launches her haunting and highly eclectic new album Turning Arrows Into Flowers in what promises to be a remarkable night of adventurous and ground breaking music, along with a superb group of musicians in the unique ambience of the Stone Gallery in Paddington. Details at www.myspace.com/nadenepita