Why are you so fluffy? Why are you so feathery?

November 19, 2013 2:18 AM

Magpie and puppy play a game. Featuring a very unphased woman hanging out a sheet.
posted by h00py (29 comments total)

When I see magpies playing like this I feel that it must be wrong to eat them.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:21 AM on November 19, 2013 [4 favorites]

That's how I feel about puppies!
posted by h00py at 2:26 AM on November 19, 2013 [18 favorites]

The magpie is teaching the puppy secrets. Wonderful, terrible secrets.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:36 AM on November 19, 2013 [7 favorites]

Also, my kitten liked this video more than I did. Of course, he got to watch the video, where I had to be content with the parts of the video unobstructed by kitten.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:38 AM on November 19, 2013 [7 favorites]

Also, I can't wait to share this with my daughter tomorrow. Magpies and dogs are her two favourite animals; her head is gonna explode when she watches it.
posted by smoke at 3:03 AM on November 19, 2013 [3 favorites]

Thanks for pointing to the original link, smoke and thanks modsquad for fixing it.
posted by h00py at 3:19 AM on November 19, 2013

I feel nervous for the magpie, it looks a lot more fragile than the puppy.
posted by JHarris at 4:13 AM on November 19, 2013 [3 favorites]

The pale grey feathers on that magpie's back say it's very young, so they're probably quite well-matched maturity-wise.

I would not be at all surprised to find out that the magpie is a hand-reared pet.
posted by flabdablet at 4:31 AM on November 19, 2013 [2 favorites]

Don't be nervous for the magpie JHarris, they can be dead-eyed attacking machines. I'm not sure I've psychically recovered from my walks to primary school over 20 years ago.

That was a very sweet video. Let the healing begin!
posted by Trivia Newton John at 4:55 AM on November 19, 2013 [8 favorites]

So this is not out of character for magpies?
posted by escape from the potato planet at 5:18 AM on November 19, 2013

Magpies are pretty idiosyncratic birds. People who live amongst trees can sometimes make friends with them but suburban magpies are usually arseholes.
posted by h00py at 5:26 AM on November 19, 2013 [1 favorite]

I had no idea that magpies were so huge! I had pictured them as like, blue-jay-size, but that thing is more like crow-size. I mean, it makes sense, them being corvids and all, but wow!
posted by fancyoats at 5:30 AM on November 19, 2013

The woman is unfazed!

So rare to see it used correctly ;-;
posted by Tobu at 5:44 AM on November 19, 2013 [7 favorites]

Wait, is this a dog with a pet magpie or a magpie with a pet dog?
posted by tommasz at 5:48 AM on November 19, 2013 [3 favorites]

She is also unphased. There are no phasers in the video at all, set to stun or kill.
posted by hippybear at 5:52 AM on November 19, 2013 [5 favorites]

She could have failed to phase with the scene being filmed. To her mind, she is still in the laundry room inside, despite a close encounter with Yog-Sothoth making her briefly coterminous with all points in time and space. I told you the magpie new secrets.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:57 AM on November 19, 2013

This is 'stroya, we spell things properly here.
posted by h00py at 6:08 AM on November 19, 2013 [2 favorites]

Wikipedia indicates that Australian magpies aren't actually corvids by the usual use of the term; they're more distantly related. What I found most interesting though was that that rolling-onto-the-back behavior was not something picked up from the puppy, it's a thing that juvenile Australian magpies do normally, which seems to basically mean that clearly God intended for cute puppy-and-magpie videos to happen.
posted by Sequence at 8:04 AM on November 19, 2013 [8 favorites]

I heard a cat meow -- where was the catta?
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 8:13 AM on November 19, 2013

Exercising extreme self discipline.
posted by h00py at 8:14 AM on November 19, 2013 [5 favorites]

I heard a cat meow -- where was the catta?

I like to think it was the bird further messing with the puppy's mind
posted by maggieb at 9:16 AM on November 19, 2013 [3 favorites]

When the older dog came slowly into the scene towards the end he was probably saying "Now you kids get off my lawn!"
posted by islander at 10:03 AM on November 19, 2013 [2 favorites]

This is how dirds are made.
posted by orme at 1:21 PM on November 19, 2013 [3 favorites]

My personal favourite bit - 3:32. Magpie Gymnastics! I do believe that's a giant swing followed by a flyaway.
posted by billiebee at 2:30 PM on November 19, 2013 [1 favorite]

I feel nervous for the magpie, it looks a lot more fragile than the puppy.

Me too. Umm, are there videos out there where this kind of thing goes horribly wrong? (Please do NOT link to them!)
posted by JanetLand at 4:21 PM on November 19, 2013

Magpies are just so smart. I've always fed them occasionally as a sort of protection racket, so I've never been swooped close to home. They become tamer, fly down to greet you when you head outdoors, eat from your hand, one's even followed me inside the house. Bacon rinds and Weetbix are favourites but I've also seen them stealing dog food. They have a great memory - months, at least.
posted by quercus23 at 4:39 PM on November 19, 2013 [1 favorite]

This is the kind of video that reminds me why I always hesitated to let my dog make friends with cats. She adored cats! She wanted to snuggle them and give them kisses! But I was always afraid the cats would learn that big dogs were their friends and would find out the bad way that this was not always the case.
posted by winna at 7:33 PM on November 19, 2013

i was actually a little bit worried the puppy was going to lose an eye.
posted by empath at 1:28 AM on November 20, 2013 [3 favorites]

Magpies do have form there.
posted by flabdablet at 9:04 AM on November 20, 2013 [1 favorite]