The Crow

[shanmonster]

Several crows live near my apartment. There's an aerie in the elm tree in our parking lot. As a result, I'm often raucously serenaded.

Crows are paranoid creatures. When I bike along, they'll stare at me from lawns. If I make eye contact with them, they immediately squat down. If I turn my head and face them directly, they leap into the air in a flurry of ebony wings.

That's the way it should be.

However, one of the crows here is abnormal. On two occasions, I've passed within a foot of a crow and it didn't budge. The first time, I biked by a crow, and could have kicked it, if I was so inclined. When my bike was past the bird, it began its rodomontade.

The second time, I was walking down the steps when something caught my attention. Before I registered what was wrong, I froze. And then I looked around to see what was awry.

A bicycle was leaning on a fence less than a foot away from me. On the handlebar closest to me perched a crow. It tilted its head and stared at me. It was bedraggled, and much smaller than I expected. Crows look much bigger, from a distance. This one didn't look a whole lot bigger than a large robin. I was surprised to see it has dark blue eyes. I'd always assumed crows had black eyes. It stared at me, and I felt intimidated. I wasn't afraid that it would leap on me and start pecking, but I was afraid that the crow was sick, and maybe I could catch whatever it had if it got cocky. Maybe it has West Nile disease. I don't know what the symptoms are in birds, only that dead crows should be reported. Normal crows just don't let people get close enough to touch them.

As I walked away, it cawed loudly, over and over.

I haven't seen it since, but I won't be surprised to bump into it again.

I still wonder why this crow is so fearless. Is it sick? Was it raised by people? I want to know.

Comments

[kitschicat.livejournal.com]

Crows are sometimes just unafraid, I've found. Not all of them, but some of them just seem to be so amused by humans they don't feel threatened being near us.

I really like crows, they are pretty cool birds IMO. :)

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

I like crows, too. They are neat. But in all my experiences with them, this is the only fella to just sit there and stare at me so unabashedly. Cheeky little bugger, isn't he?

[iroshi.livejournal.com]

Perhaps Crow was borrowing his body for a bit. One never knows.

[prolixfootle.livejournal.com]

It wants to be your familiar...

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

Sheesh! I'm glad Matthew Hopkins isn't handy, or I'd really be in a pickle.

[freakwoman.livejournal.com]

CAAW!!!

[ngtmagicks.livejournal.com]

Very cool.
It's sorta like this raven that has adopted my girlfriend's house since I started staying with her.

Seems that before this once a week, or a month she would go to work in the morning and the tree out front would erupt with birds. She heard them the night before and all that didn't think to much of it. It was afterall, only once a month usually.

Now though, there is this one raven that started singing, cawing the first night I was over there. So far, 3 months down the road and every night when I get there after work, it hops down from the tree to in front of the door, caws a few times and flies back up to sing when the bedroom light goes out. The cheeky bird will even ruffle itself up if anyone comes out the door to say hi when I get home.

Very strange bird...

bold as brass

[metasilk.livejournal.com]

It might also have been a teenaged crow -- there are some good crow sites on the web -- Cornell University, maybe, or perhaps Berndt Heinrich from University of Vermont...

On the other hand, maybe you might enjoy reading "Someplace to be Flying" by Charles deLint.

Re: bold as brass

[metasilk.livejournal.com]

gannet found some crow links, figured I'd pass 'em on:

Crow Girls (http://www.sfsite.com/charlesdelint/crowgrls.htm)

from the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10019-2003Jul31)