April 18, 2007
Masan, South Korea
Today I witnessed a strange
encounter between animals—a cat and two magpies. I had never seen
anything like it. I was walking from the library to the Eng. Dept.
Building (In Mun Kwon). There was an orange cat relaxing on the
concrete steps of the soccer field, just enjoying the short period of
sunshine. Two magpies were hopping about nearby, only two meters away,
calling at the cat, “Chak chak chak! Chak chak chak!” What was odd
was that the cat seemed utterly unconcerned, as if the magpies weren’t there. At most, mildly annoyed. He stretched, yawned, turned over and rubbed his back on the warm
concrete. Then he got up and starting walking slowly away, not even
looking at the noisy birds. They kept yelling, “Chak chak chak!” trying
to get his attention, hopping on either side of him, staying just far enough
away in case the cat lost his cool and lashed out.
I just watched,
amazed. What was going on? Is this how Korean animals behave?
Did they know each other? Did the cat get Buddhist training at the nearby
Seon temple? Or was he just old and deaf?
Here’s how I imagine it: The magpies were complaining that the cat had killed and eaten their baby.
“Chak chak chak!
You ate our baby bird! Give it back! Chak chak chak! You bad
cat! Give our baby back! We’re not afraid of you! Chak chak
chak chak!”
The cat was thinking,
“Well, I don’t know magpie language, but I can imagine what they’re upset
about. Yes, I ate their baby. It fell out of the nest, I pounced on
it, and I ate it. What do they suppose I’d do? I’m a cat! I
enjoy eating little birds. They’re tasty, except for the feathers. It’s what I do. Stupid birds! Do
they think I can give them back their baby! Too late for that, I’m
afraid. Anyway, do they think they are any better than I? I’ve seen
them steal eggs from other birds’ nests and eat them! Maybe they’ll go
away if I just ignore them. In any case, they’d better watch out.
I’m quite capable of killing them, too, though it would take more energy than
I’m willing to expend at present. I wish they’d go away, though. I’d like to take a nap.”
If I had more time I
would have stood and watched. I wanted to see if the birds could goad the
cat into violence. I wondered if unusual animal behavior like this had
inspired Aesop, lo, some 2.5 millennia ago, to write his fables. Maybe he
saw two or three weird encounters, and just imagined the rest. I wondered
how he would construe this one. What would the moral be? Maybe
something plain and harsh like: No use complaining to vicious animals who
eat your babies, especially if you engage in similar cruelty.
The Asian magpie (pica
serica) belongs to the corvid family, which includes crows, ravens,
bluejays and jackdaws, all noted for their large brain size, intelligence, and
mischievousness. Interestingly, Pica
serica diverged from its ancestral stock about five million years ago, or
about a million years later than human-like animals split from the chimps. According to Wikipedia, it “has been adopted as the "official bird" of numerous
South Korean cities, counties and provinces.”
I can say for sure they are noisy and numerous on the campus where I
work at Kyungnam U. in Masan, on the southern coast.
To review
our vocabulary, magpie is kka-chi in Korean (I have no idea how to
pronounce it; I’ll have to ask someone.
It looks like a sneezing sound.), called minhwa in folk
paintings. I’ll have to ask someone if the former word is Chinese in
origin or, as I suspect, a native Korean word that comes from the sound the
bird makes, ad nauseam. Kasa-sagi is the Japanese.
It has its own kanji, the second element of which is the same for “tori,”
bird, but I couldn’t find the first part, the “kasa” part. How
come sagi, heron, doesn’t have a kanji but is written in hiragana?
Why isn’t magpie kasa-tori in Japanese? It must go back to the
original Chinese words for the bird.
The English etymology is
also interesting and a little easier:
“The prefix ‘mag-‘ is short
for ‘Margaret.’ [Our dear daughter’s name.] Known for its noisy chattering, the
European Magpie may have acquired its name as an allusion to nagging. It could
have also been named after "Maggot" because it stole eggs and
nestlings from other birds. "'Pie' is the original name of the bird,
from the Latin pica.” [Wikipedia]
Being around so many magpies here, I picked up on their
“nagging” from the very start, even before I read about the origin of the name,
another unconscious expression of my European heritage. When I walk in
the early morning from my apartment to my office in the Tosa-kwan (library), just a
ten-minute walk, they often heckle me from the trees: “Chak chak chak
chak! Who are you, weird foreign guy? What are you doing
here? Chak chak! Go home, weird old bastard! We’ll shit on
your old white head and no one will know! Chakkity chak chak! Go home,
you old foreign fart! Chak chak, etc.” Apparently, though, the
Koreans (the few who still pay attention to birds) regard them as good-news
messengers rather than just naggers or scolders
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