Lloyd doesn’t anticipate Australasian swamphens
Lloyd emerges from the caravan and greets Tom Cashman with the word “Trumpet”, before asking if the crows on the bales of hay are “a murder” (the collective noun for crows).
Tom says he doesn’t know how many crows you need for a murder, so Lloyd suggests maybe just an “aggravated assault”.
When Tom asks Lloyd what scares him, he says “not having enough food in the fridge”. Tom asks him what happens then, and Lloyd mutters “I’ll have to go out and buy it. Absolute nightmare. Every day of my life until I die.”
Lloyd attaches some mannequin legs to a pair of skis. When one leg falls over, he gaffer-tapes them together, describing it as “a thong”. Tom says that it looks more like a nappy, and Lloyd points out in response that incontinence can also be scary.
He attaches a skeleton, holding a water gun, to the mannequin legs, and puts a hat and a pair of sunglasses on it. He also hangs a guitar down its side.
Lloyd’s plan is to tie items of cutlery to the skeleton, so that the wind makes them hit the guitar, creating an audible deterrent for the crows. Unfortunately, the resulting sound turns out to be a bit more gentle and ambient than he had anticipated.
When some birds are heard squawking in the background, Lloyd tells them to “Piss off!”.
Lloyd asks Tom how long he has left, and Tom advises him that he only has 26 seconds, so he hides behind the caravan, to see if any crows show up in the remaining time.
After receiving the second task brief, Tom apologises that this implies that Lloyds 26 second test wasn’t quite enough, but Lloyd responds that his test had filled him with confidence, and that every marathon starts with a single step.
As he positions his scarecrow in the paddock, Lloyd points out that there is a goose nearby which is wisely keeping its distance.
In the studio, Tom Gleeson asks Lloyd what made the scarecrow scary, and Lloyd points out to him that there were knives and forks on bits of string, which would clang against the guitar. Josh suggests that there is nothing scarier than somebody getting out a guitar at a party.
Some motion-activated camera footage of the scarecrow in the sunflower patch is then shown, revealing that two Australasian swamphens had come tantalisingly close to the sunflowers, before a third one actually entered the patch.
Lloyd argues that he had made a scarecrow, not a “scareaustralasian swamphen”, and that not a single crow had turned up.
Nonetheless, Lloyd is disqualified from the task.
(Written by JoGo and proofread by Karl Craven)
(Illustrations collected by JoGo and adjusted by Karl Craven)
