
So wild he has had to be chained to someone’s hand. What a maverick
The owner of Rufus, the Harris hawk, admitted this morning that the pigeon-scarer had not in fact been stolen, but had been on “a bender of brain-melting, gut-rotting proportions”, before being scooped out of the gutter and handed in to the RSPCA on Sunday.
Rufus, whose sole purpose in life is to prevent pigeon shit landing on tennis fans, was reportedly “So bored out of his tiny brain that he just buggered off after Thursday’s matches.”
Police searching for the reportedly stolen bird, said their suspicions were aroused when witnesses claimed to have seen a hawk drinking several cans of Sainsbury’s super-strength lager, at a bus stop on Saturday night.
PC McGarry No 452, of Scotland Yard’s Ornithological Larceny Division, said “Further questioning revealed that a bird matching Rufus’s description was thrown out of a bar earlier that evening, after trying to start a fight with a stuffed owl behind the bar.”
“We then found CCTV footage of him drunkenly weaving across the street, almost being hit by a car, and then entering Spearmint Rhino.”
The hawk spent some time in the strip joint, before once again being thrown out. This time the ejection was for diving at 145 mph onto the feathered bra of one of the strippers and ripping it away, believing it to be a wood-pigeon.
At which point the bouncers grabbed him and gave him a good kicking before leaving him for dead on the street.
“Rufus then seems to have regained consciousness, entered an all-night branch of Sainsbury’s, and bought the lager,” said PC McGarry “When we questioned him, we were able to go through his receipts, matching his movements up to CCTV, and piecing together an almost unbelievable three days of alcohol, sex and violence.”
This is not the first time that alcohol and Wimbledon have mixed to create a stir. Sue Barker once drank so much gin during a match that she unsuccessfully propositioned her opponent seven times, before calling her a frigid cow, and stomping away.
And last year a drunken Cliff Richard wandered onto the centre court, took off his clothes, and started singing at the top of his voice, before being removed by ballboys. He was said to have found the manhandling “Preternaturally arousing”.
McGary said “Rufus is lucky not to be in hospital, prison or worse. I mean; fucking hell. I have never seen a bird-binge get so out of hand. And I used to patrol in Newcastle, when the Hen parties were on.”