Lions gather in prides, baboons meet in a congress and a gaggle of crows is known as a murder of crows. My daddy had a great deal of respect for the crow family. “Everything in the whole world will change but crows will still be here”, daddy said. Oh they were thieves and scallywags always stealing eggs from other nests and devouring a row of corn but daddy believed crows could execute a foolish man so he always tried reasoning with them.
Ah daddy, I’d argue “a crow can’ hurt you.” But daddy would cock his wise old head and say how crows knew the difference between their friends and foes and when the rapture comes, those feathers become robes and they judge the rest of us.
Well I explained all this to Cousin Charlie when he and his lovely wife visited in my northwest home but it didn’t do much good. Charlie’s from southwestern VA same as the rest of us but he has aristocratic tendencies that delude him into thinking he can control a crow. During their visit, a murder of them had congregated in my fir tree and began cawing before dawn.
“Don’t they bother you,” Charles asked me. I had to admit, I’d never noticed them before.
Oh I’d seen crows fussing at the eagles and gulls and When I plant the garden, Sylvester, that’s what I call the guard crow, Sylvester sits high up in an old cedar keeping watch for danger while his family perches on the fence and caws at me.
But I couldn’t remember that they ever once woke me up.
I suggested Charlie talk with them and he howled with laughter. But the next morning when the crow cacophony began, Cousin Charlie put my bathrobe over his long hairy body like a mini skirt, and stormed the fir tree. He yelled at those birds. He cursed. He ordered them off the property. Well, if you know crows, you know how much good that did. So he decided to shoot them.
“Now wait a minute, we have gun laws around neighborhoods,” I told him remembering what happened when my roofer shot at the front yard deer and the police came.
“I’ll get a sling shot,” Charlie said. He bought the fanciest sling shot I ever saw that fit over your arm and fastened around your wrist. The next morning he armored up. Sylvester saw him first and cawed so loud the birds took flight before Cousin Charlie got off a round of gravel. “Just lucky,” he yelled at the black cloud lifting over the evergreens.
I tried to explain to Charlie that no matter what he did, the crows would still be around and the more he messed with them the more noise they’d make. “They have bird brains”, Charlie smirked. I can outsmart them.” I told him there’s a reason Alfred Hitchcock made that Bird movie. Charlie didn’t pay no never mind.
So I told Charlie about the time I saw daddy ask the crows to stay out of his garbage
cans and eat out off a stand he’d build them. Charlie said, he’d rather shoot them. Then I told him about daddy taking me down to the river fiord the first time so I could watch a murder of crows teach their young to feed. It was a lavender twilight. Daddy laid some broken ears of corn on a snag that reached out over the Roanoke River. First one bird came to inspect the offering, and then another and a third crow took up watch in a sycamore tree. Suddenly a murder of crows dive bombed the old snag but instead of eating the corn, they pushed it over to the smallest crow, the baby of the murder. One of the big crows held the cob, took a peck and fed it to the babe. All of them cawed and cawed. fussed and fussed at that little black bird till that new born put one foot on the cob and beaked those kernels in its mouth. Daddy said that’s why god gave them those judges’ robes, because they had enough sense to decide what’s wrong and right and band together to raise the young uns… “No matter who else lives or dies, there will always be crows.”
Well, my daddy’s story made no impression on Cousin Charles. Every morning Charlie went into battle and every time the crows scattered before he could use the fancy sling shot. But when my cousins returned to VA, the crows were still yelling up a storm. Now they woke me before sun up. Now they cawed like a nuisance chorale. So one day I looked at Charlie’s sling shot and thought, maybe I’ll just scare em.
But when I stood there, sling full of gravel and ready to launch, Sylvester cawed. Cawed and cawed till the flock flew. But Sylvester grabbed a lower branch and starred at me. Starred at me like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, starred at me like I had lost my mind. So I lowered my sling shot, and said “Your honor, thanks for sparing my cousin’s life.”
And they never woke me up again.
Auntmama
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