This piece was written for the weekly Unicorn Challenge, assembling up to 250 words based on a picture prompt.
Australian ornithologists are beside themselves (or at least they are when two or more are gathered together in the name of birds) with excitement over the first authenticated photograph of the fabled Oomebumbum bird. Most adults have long refused to recognise its existence, putting sightings into the realm of other life lessons with which adults imbue children, such as Santa Claus is real, which they later deny, and then wonder why their children grow up to be drug addicts or Tory voters or both.
Of course, Indigenous Australians have always known of its existence and depictions of its unique shape and habits appear in rock art and cave paintings across Australia. It’s raucous cry has been preserved in oral history by the Elders as most closely resembling Question Time in Parliament after the latest Budget has been handed down.
Little is known about the diet of the Oomebumbum, although the beak indicates a varied diet, probably including witchetty grubs and hot chips. The streamlined body shape would suggest that it it’s preferred hunting strategy is surprising its prey by swooping down from a great height, grabbing it and soaring back to the heavens. Occasionally, as the young birds are still learning their flight skills, they will miscalculate and scrape their backsides along the ground, and fly off into the sky screaming ‘Oomebumbum, oomebumbum’, hence the origin of the name. The PM has placed an immediate protection order on them and they will replace the kangaroo on Qantas livery.
Six Crooked Highways 
The origin of its name is you at your awesome appalling best, Doug!
I thought Australians were too smart to have Tories or, as we call them, lying, corrupt, self-entitled psychopaths.
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Here they have the nerve to call themselves the Liberal Party. They are currently led by an ex-copper just to the left of Genghis Khan who has a passing resemblance to Mr. Potato Head, but of a lower intelligence.
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Droll as always Doug. ‘The Song Of The Scraped Bottom’ could be your next prompt?
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I’m sure it would be a barrel of laughs. 😉
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Sitting here smiling at this great tongue in cheek encyclopedia entry, peppered with your signature humorous digs at society.
How the Oomebumbum got its name is priceless – sheer brilliance.
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Thanks, by the way, for the gift of the Sub Club newsletter.
I’m looking forward to spending time investigating it this weekend.
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Great source of possibilities for sharing your work more widely, as it thoroughly deserves to be.
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Thanks, Jenne. That story has been delighting my grandchildren for years.
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Laughing me oomebumbum off!
David Attenborough would do a bang up job narrating this!
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He surely would. I’ll give him a call. 🙂
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It is little known that the reason why they are so rarely seen is their annual migration to the north pole where they have sometimes been mistaken for penguins; the observers thus ridiculed as everyone knows penguins only live in the Antarctic.
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or Hollywood. 🙂
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Such a funny story, Doug. Love the name of the bird and its suspected “varied diet, probably including witchetty grubs and hot chips.”
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Glad you liked it. It was fun to write.
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Let’s see Wikipedia audit that entry for fauna-indigenous-to-the-upside-down half of the world!
Fun story
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Thanks, clark. 🙂
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The Aussie equivalent of the seagull that nicked some of my chips yesterday!
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