Conversation With A Cocky Killer

In the local supermarket yesterday, I was behind an older lady at the checkout. I have been behind her before and know that she dithers and takes a long time to get her few purchases through. However, bearing in mind that it could be me dithering in the supermarket queue in the future, I am patient and understanding, assuring her, when she repeatedly apologises, that I don't mind the wait.

The lady's shopping included several packets of rolled oats, more than you would expect a single old person to need, but I didn't think much about it, maybe it was a bargain this week. The teenage checkout operator was sent scurrying to the back of the shop to fetch some cat mince for her. While we waited, she began to talk to me, telling me that she bought the oats to feed the cockies (sulphur-crested cockatoos) in her garden. They began visiting, apparently, during the drought a few years ago, she started feeding them out of kindness ('I'm too soft-hearted, I'm a soft touch when it comes to animals.') and they have stayed. She said that she knew many people did not like the cockies in their gardens and asked me if I liked them. I assured her that they frequently visited my red gums and that I didn't mind, whereupon I became, in her words, a 'very kind person'.

Before the checkout operator returned, she had time to tell me that a lot of the cockies got sick, their feathers became oily and their beaks were malformed so they couldn't eat. Some of them even died in her garden. 'But I look after them. I give them oats and sometimes buy them seeds as well.'

How could I tell this kind-hearted old lady that it was probably her 'kindness' in feeding them the wrong diet that was making them sick and killing them? I'm no expert on bird diseases, but think it's likely that her source of free food would be attracting more cockies than would normally visit a town garden and they would be infecting each other with whatever illness the inappropriate diet has brought about.

When the checkout operator returned and finished scanning her groceries, she gave him the chocolate bar she had bought, thanking him and saying, 'They're aways very kind to me in here'. By that time we had established that the checkout operator (indeed all the supermarket staff) were very kind to her, I was a very kind person for waiting patiently and engaging in a conversation with her (really more of a monologue) and she herself was kind because she fed the birds (and the cats, but that's another story!).

Oh dear, there is no way I could have told her she was killing the cockies with kindness.