ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A farmer in the district has spent the past few days on Hamilton Island where he’s been harassed non-stop by “the fucking cockatoos”.
So much so, Betoota grazier Dale Clarke has asked the “blokes working at the hotel” if they’ve ever tried “shooting the fucking things” or controlling them in other ways.
He spoke briefly to The Advocate about his experience on the island so far.
“I told them a bit of grain with omethoate run through it would make short work of these fucking birds. I even offered to send a few bags up when I got home. You’d never heard such a racket. I went down to the pool just before with the family and came back and the fucking things had got through the fly screen and were making a god-awful mess,” he said.
“Shooing them off my Jatz. One of them ate half a block of Cheer the fucking thing. Fucking flying around our hotel room. I punched one of them mid-air, I did, but he just screamed and took off again,”
“Tell you what if this was my farm, I’d have the slug gun on the coffee table ready to go. They’d soon learn not to land on my balcony, the fucking things.”
Dale told our reporter that he raised the issue with a porter, or as he says “the young man that carried the bags up to the room”, and the porter just shrugged.
“This little bastard has no answers for me. He just said, ‘We just keep our doors shut’ and took off,” he said.
“You’re telling me you can’t leave a box of Jatz out with a bit of cheese? These fucking things chewed through the side of my golf bag to get a muesli bar. I’m all for living in harmony with the animals but that is beyond the pale.”
More to come.
