Speaking to Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show this week, McKinnon revealed that she fell in love with the ibis during the filming of Joe vs Carol in Brisbane last year. Yes, that mascot of grubby university campuses and inner-west back alleys.
In typical talk show fashion, McKinnon was happy to throw herself under the bus for the entertainment of millions of viewers.
According to McKinnon, she discovered “the most beautiful bird I had seen in my life” on her first day in Australia. It was a creature with “beautiful white Plumage” and a “long elegant beak”.
McKinnon was gobsmacked like a khaki-clad tourist on an African safari…
“What is this majestic heron just loose in the street?”, she asked herself apparently.
“Oh my God, I’ve been blessed here. This is a sight.”
A local then explained to MacKinnon that the bird is an ibis (more popularly known as a “bin chicken”) and that these plague pigeons have a knack for scavenging meals from rubbish bins.
Clearly, McKinnon was unaware of evolution’s quirks in this polluted hellscape we call Australia.
McKinnon was equally excited to see kangaroos and wallabies while she was in Australia. How bin chickens are even in the same discussion as our beloved national treasures is a mystery to us, but each to their own.
