Soggy Birds

Yesterday Adelaide had it's wettest day of the year. This included December's average rainfall slamming down in just over an hour. I was in office, and had a pretty good view of everything unfolding. It was some apocalyptic shit. The summer sun was completely eclipsed by inky black storm clouds around 3pm. Pretty much the entire floor stopped working (which for most of the day was ogling the radar on Weatherzone anyway) to gather around the windows and titter at the storm. It was good fun. My phone tried to take a photo.

During a gap between downpours I walked home, taking my usual route along the Torrens. The river was flowing strong, but hadn't burst the banks. Most of the footpath was a river unto itself though, River Torrens Minor, about an inch deep. There were lots of soggy birds around: pigeons who look like they didn't know what the fuck had just happened, horrified adolescent magpies, unimpressed ducks.
Near the King William Street bridge there was an unusual sight. A Magpie Lark that looked reasonably dry was walking towards the river, crossing over a major puddle on the footpath. For all intents and purposes it looked like Jesus walking on the water. If Jesus was a bird. I slowed down to watch it (I regretted that later as I got rained on a lot) and the bird also seemed to realise that it was doing something impressive, because when it jumped up onto the rise between the river and the puddle it turned around and looked down at its reflection, as if pondering 'Did I just walk on water like mofo'ing Jesus?'

I'd stopped now, watching the bird tilt its head side-to-side like he was posing in a mirror. Then he started to strut away, only at that point noticing that I was watching him and he realised I'd witnessed his whole show. After a second of eye-contact he spread his wings, stared directly at me and chirped "Like a G6!" And then he flew off.