Entry 1: The Beginning

Kookie Banjo Jr. was a silly bird. He was a kookaburra, round as a ball. He had an odd personality, very quirky for a bird. Kookie enjoyed scams and spaghetti and claiming his mistakes were committed by “another bird”. Even when everyone in the room had witnessed it was him.

Kookie had a regular hangout. He had two friends (though one was actually an undercover spy): Louis the lorikeet and Samson the pigeon. Kookie had known his bird friends for a long time, but he still didn’t know Louis preferred to be called Louie. The three birds met every Wednesday afternoon at The Café. The Café was on Main Street and for 3pm on Wednesdays, it was always packed. This was because the other patrons were not birds, so half of them came to gawk at them.

Luckily, The Café’s owner was pro-bird. He also was a bit of a cheapskate, and Kookie and his friends ordered plenty of food. Kookie always ordered two serves of extra saucy spaghetti, one vanilla milkshake and one scoop of chocolate ice cream. If he was in a good mood, he also ordered hot chips with sriracha sauce. If he was in a bad mood, he ordered a third serve of spaghetti but not extra saucy.

Louis was the spy. He ordered affogatos with the vanilla ice cream minimised. Samson ate carrot cakes with a side of herbal tea. He wore large glasses with metallic steel wiring. The glasses were often without lens. Samson was borderline mute. But when heavily caffeinated, he giggled and buzzed like a vibrating phone. Once he vibrated so much, he shook his way to the edge of his seat and flopped off upside down.

Kookie had no idea how he befriended Samson. One day, Louis and Kookie were hanging out at The Café alone. Then, Samson was there as well. Kookie and Louis didn’t ask why he had joined them, and it stayed that way.

Kookie had met Louis at a local library. Kookie was trying to sell copies of his self-published book “Why kookaburras can teach philosophy”, when Louis came by and struck up a conversation. “One copy, please.” Kookie charged $30 for his terrible book, which annoyed Louis so much. But he had a job to do, and that was becoming ‘friends’ with Kookie. Louis said he was unemployed, when actually he was a spy. Kookie felt overwhelming pity for the lorikeet, as much as it was only possible for a kookaburra with an extremely inflated ego to feel.

“Can we be friends?” Louis asked. “You’re an impressive bird and I can learn much from you.”

“But of course!” Kookie said. “I’ll teach you all about life.”

“Are you a philosopher?” Louis asked, peering at the book cover. He flipped it open with his beak, and there on the inside jacket was a black-and-white photo of Kookie in a beret and a name-tag pinned to his vest-jacket: “Kookie Banjo Junior”.

“Was a philosopher,” Kookie snorted. “The game is rigged.”

“Please tell me more.” Louis’ eyes were black and keen. They almost reminded Kookie of a sharpened knife. Luckily he liked knives. “Well, alright. Let’s meet tomorrow at 3pm, at The Café.”

Oh that little slum between four walls, Louis thought smugly. Out loud he said, “Tomorrow is good. But 3.30pm.” He had spy activities to carry out till 3.20pm, then it was a rough 10min fly path to The Café from there.

At The Café, Kookie filled him in on his personal history:

“When I was a little bird, I inherited the Cwazy Gene. It means I live for at least 250 years. I am currently 127 years old, yes I was at World War II. With the Cwazy Gene I miraculously escape all plots to kill me and accidents become near-accidents. I always manage to get away by the thinnest feather of my wings. The escape can’t be too miraculous, so as not to raise eyebrows. It has to be a near-escape.

The gene also means I’m so smart now, I forget philosophy. Yes, the gene only kicks in post-30 years old, and so I was an established philosophy professor before I suddenly became cwaz– I mean really, really too smart. I also majored in public relations, so before the professor role I was in a marketing department selling Coca-Cola to naïve people who never knew how much sugar it had. This was in the beginnings of the soda drink. When it became so popular to sell itself, my marketing department was fired and our redundancy package was bags of raw sugar. I mean for the birds.”

“Birds, plural?”

“Yes, me and two other birds.” Kookie pronounced birds as “booords”. In fact, he pronounced all his vowels wrong: “little” became “leeetle” and “currently” became “cooorently”, and so on.

Louis settled into his seat at The Café. Here was his main question: “How did they hire birds? And how did you manage to become a bird professor?”

Kookie ruffled his feathers and looked about. “I don’t know what you mean. Why would they not hire me?”

“Well…” If Louis were human, he would blush. ‘I mean, well, you’re a bit different.” Non-human.

“Of course they would hire me,” Kookie’s voice raised a little, indignant but also enthusiastic. “I had all necessary credentials, I studied hard” (“stooodied”). He paused, his eyes widening, “You think there were other candidates better than me?”