An ibis in Paris

I like to mark time. To circle dates and point out moments in the past to anyone who will listen. It's five years today since I left Australia for the Mother Country. Five years since I wore a cotton winter coat, grabbed a suitcase full of clothes for a slightly fatter body and a lime (just in case – there have been so many historical cases of scurvy on voyages between Botany Bay and England).

A while ago I was listening on the radio to an Italian guy, a dancer, who has been living in France for the last twenty years. He was saying that for him and other expat friends of his five years away is when you start to make a choice: should I stay or should I go.

Looking around at some expats I know it has been a bit like that. They hit the five year mark and they pack up all their accumulated artefacts (oversized ornamental hippos bought in Portugal etc) and go back to where they came from. They fold up a life within weeks, carrying it "home" in excess baggage.

Whether this anniversary will have the same effect on me remains to be seen. Sometimes I catch the tiniest whiff of Australia on a spring day in Paris. My nose is the sniffer dog of history. I react to the smell and sniff out the traces of my past sewn firmly into secret pockets or lying at the bottom of an unsettled stomach. I think what it would be like to go back. I've grown to love the cold winter which tinkles, to love Europe as a bloc and a well-studied mannerism. It doesn’t feel worn out yet.

I'm pleased with my own relative exotic status in paris: pleasantly exotic rather than out of place. As I wrote in my old blog:

Considering that in Australia I always felt a bit out of place, not sporty enough, a strange dark, bookish character sitting up a tree watching everyone else participating in life.

I’ve been reading Australian newspapers lately and I came across a newspaper blog on the Australian white ibis which can be found roaming freely in Sydney's parks. An animal behaviourist, Ursula Munro, has been studying ibises for the past five years and believes the "east coast cities have become a last bastion for the species in a time of extreme stress".
Apparently Sydney councils have been exterminating the birds and destroying their nests because they are seen as pests (or perhaps not sporty enough).

According to the blog "Before the 1980s ibises were rarely seen in coastal cities such as Sydney and the appearance of the odd straggler generated excitement among locals". But the blog posed the question whether Sydneysiders believed that ibises should be protect or culled and I was surprised at the viciousness of many of the readers' responses, many of them advocating mass execution.

At the risk of being “just an expat” and being dubbed the Germaine Greer of the ibis debate, I left my own hoity toity deux centimes' worth:

I live in Paris and I recently visited Le Jardin des Plantes, a small zoo in the 13th arrondissement. Having grown up in Sydney and grown accustomed to seeing ibises roaming free near the Botanical gardens and at Circular Quay, I was surprised to find that ibises featured as an exotic bird in this French zoo, a bit like having a parisian pigeon in one of the enclosures at Taronga Zoo.

French friends who have visited Sydney with me have been charmed and surprised by this unusual bird strutting around the harbour foreshores, which does indeed add character to Sydney - so important in this world where the arrival of global chain stores means that all big cities in the world are starting to resemble one another to the detriment of diversity.

I'm surprised at some of the venom in the comments above - as if something so trivial as a bird trying to steal your sandwich is a reason for mass killing and annihilation of the species.
As someone commented above - be glad that the city can at least support some wildlife. One of the things I admire about Sydney is that the creation of a big, modern city has not completely destroyed all signs of nature and that sydneysiders still have the opportunity to live among animals.