Staying at the Crest Hotel one night, and after a steak and a beer our crew on the way back found a extremely dead magpie in the gutter, knowing one Capt. John Hickey was safely tucked up in bed, and knowing he always left his shoes out to be cleaned (you used to be able to do that without them being nicked then) we stuffed the deceased bird into his shoe (the maggies were having a horror season) and happily hit the cot. 0600 and the banging on my door was hard to ignore, and there stood(in his PJ,s) one extremely irate JH, naturally I denied everything, and suggested he contact one of the Flight Engineers, for further info (as you do). Do you think he would let it go, no, every crew room had signs posted for weeks calling for our scalps, so of course the inevitable happened, he turned up for a flight and there in his seat was, a, you guessed it, a dead magpie all carefully tied up in his harness, the F/O reckoned he was a hospital case (us northerners did not realise how serious AFL really was until then).
