For weeks it seemed, a small scruffy ball of feathers would intermittently gape and squawk. Fed out on the back deck by my diligent daughter, chick starter and water mix unceremoniously stuffed down its opened beak gullet. Our young Corvid thrived.
It was weeks away before it could fly, so we did our best keeping it safe until it could look after itself. The indignity of a cardboard box in our recycling shed, the last place it ever wanted to be.
It finally learnt to fly and its little world was suddenly immeasurably expanded - so was ours.
The slightly freakish sensation of having a crow descend and land on your head from apparently nowhere is unforgettable. There was a lot about Blue that was unforgettable!
It would do little wing fluttering dances on the fence for me, that I came to see as a show of affection, but could just as well been an exasperated "feed me". But in my own mind it gave me some reassurance that we had bonded. A welcome counterpoint to the steady level of exasperation a young Corvid brings.
Don't get me wrong, life with a crow can be a joy! They are playful and exuberant and make you feel good about yourself and interaction with the unhuman world. I somehow think that the interaction in our family was slightly one sided though. I did feel that the young crow treated me with a touch too much respect. I was the mark of all its boundaries.
We have a fenced garden around our house that has room for vegetables, flowers and a few meandering perennials. On Spring mornings I work this space and get ready for planting. The Spring of 2019 I had a constant companion, hopping along the fence keeping a close watch on all I did. Blue would on occasion hop down and try to help. As much for its own safety I would shew it away, to the sound of animated hurt squawks. A low doleful questioning squawk. But there was a game to be played here.
Blue was an early riser, she (we all decided that Blue was a she - with the absence of any proof) would spend many hours working on set tasks. Our gardening scissors were a major project and were never the same again! Many hours of meticulous beak work separated the various layers of interconnected plastics from the metal, plastic spiralized in non-utilitarian ways.
The real downfall of our relationship, was a real brilliance of Blues, she decided to help me in the morning. Give me a head start before I woke up. We were at planting time and all my starts were going in the ground. I came down one morning and Blue was perched on the fence as usual, but extra animated. I came to regard crow excitement with some suspicion, so looked around warily. Several of yesterday's plant starts were laying neatly plucked from their plantings. This I realized a few days later was a first trial run. The defoliation became serial. Each morning, after it had pulled up a fresh line of new shootlings it would wait gleefully for me to come out and inspect its meticulous work. Rarely a sprout spared, all lined up beside their respective graves - resurrected - never to feel the dark earth again.
The shewing aways became more earnest, and her doleful squawks more animated. I do think that part of her was trying to help, but now she was also getting angry with me. I was frustratingly ungrateful. She seemed to love me and hate me all at the same time. Maybe a crow has only one word for emotion? All that is good and bad, somehow the same part of belonging. All interaction an escalation of attachment. Blue, our small helpless crow was turning drama queen.
With endings, its generally not just one thing, but a series of interconnection and circumstance that tip the balance. Blue had outlived her welcome, but also needed to be in crow world where everything she did made sense.
Working outside I happened to leave my socket set on the ground (admittedly my mistake). A mess of sockets later - all scattered around - I swore at both the crow and my lazy mowing. Several turned up a number of days later, one in the chicken coup, but the 10mm was gone forever. All outside was fair game for Blue. She would peer into our top room from the guttering above only imagining the small shinny objects waiting for her attention. I could hear her one morning clattering on the roof guttering above me, alternately scratching along the metal and tapping with her beak. A large hawk swooped from nowhere. I knew that crows and hawks were deadly enemies, our local crows would harass them, flying artfully, plucking at their tail feathers the hawk no match for a murder of quick-witted creatures. But our crow was alone.
The decision was made to take Blue back where we found her. From her beginnings, a small mote of black feathers on tarmac with bleeding damaged claw. The place was suitable enough, wooded with her extended family nearby. Three miles away I drove her there, feeling layers of guilt at her helpless kidnapping. She flew into a nearby tree, and looked inquisitively at me as I drove off.
This was the Covid Spring, everything was slightly unworldly. A crow harbinger, and me running away. Not lost on me in my strange mythopoeia the Corvid, Covid ring.
In terms of myth and revelation it had already been a strange few years.
I returned home and sat on our front porch feeling acutely the absence of her playful caw-cawing's
Caw-Caw.
A jubilant Blue flew up our property and landed on the fence. I admit a slight dread rose above rationality for a brief moment. I took that moment and scooped her up carrying her down the hill to where I left the cage. She halfheartedly pecked at my fingers but never did hurt. Me and Blue were in uncharted territory and I knew I had to drive her further afield.
Forty minutes' drive and we were on the edge of forest expanse, I hoped an ideal home. Again, I opened the cage door and Blue flew onto a branch, uncertain this time. I drove off and felt miserable. That night a ghost of the crow came and talked with me. Its eye was damaged and hollow and it wondered why? Was this her next journey and how to make it home? Guilt followed me around for weeks. Had our crow been run over, uncertain and naïve of traffic as it was?
It was months later when I was playing Calexico's "Garden Ruin" album. I absent mindedly looked at the album cover, a crow, branches growing through it as if returning to the earth. I thought about my garden, and the album cover resonated with my dream.
Just a number of months ago there was an article in our local paper (four years later now). A reminiscence from some years back. The author was sitting at an outside table and a crow pealed of a small grouping of its compatriots and landed on the table. Apparently friendly and used to human contact. The area the writer lived was close enough to where I dropped off Blue. He snapped a picture of the bird, me looking down at its one missing claw from all those years ago.
