Crow Planet
Monday, January 11, 2010
They are everywhere, and late in the afternoon their noise overwhelms. It's as if black umbrellas are being open and shut all across the sky, as if these crows—so wild, so raucous, so seemingly undecided about their branch on the tree—are simply not going to put up with us humans any longer. They come in force. They rule.
This afternoon, working on client stories, I could hardly think past their sound.
Finally, I picked up my camera, leaned out of my office door and snapped this shot. Then I reached for Crow Planet, Lyanda Lynn Haupt's unusual memoir/guide/meander/history book/naturalist's plea (Little Brown, 2009), and found this remembered paragraph:
Everybody has a crow story. I heard of a crow who accompanied a mail carrier on his daily route every day for more than two years, walking behind him like a golden retriever before inexplicably disappearing. I heard from a Benedictine nun that a crow in the woods surrounding her monastery befriended a large black, green-eyed cat named Ashford, and that the two shared in feasting on the birds that Ashford caught and killed. I just heard from a friend that she was watching a crow work for some time to balance a medium-sized stone atop a larger stone.... I heard from a pilot friend that his friend... also a pilot, watched the Snowbirds...practicing for an air show and afterward, a crow in the trees near the airfield practiced flying upside down.
I could tell you crow stories, too, and I've written some of them into my new novel for adults. But I'm more interested, frankly, in yours.
