She awoke early in the morning to the sound of crows squawking. It was 4:30 a.m. and the moon was high in the faded blue-black sky as daylight crept over its face. The birds were quite loud; they sounded angry. Recently she had been watching a couple raise a baby in the trees across from her third floor balcony. She rose out of bed and went to the open window, but couldn’t see them anywhere. Their continued noise made her look down to the far left. The mother and father were perched on a telephone wire that hung between some trees, looking down at something in the bushes. She thought their young one might be in danger. Two more crows floated downward, and they moved up to a higher wire right above the alley. Joining in the chorus, their volume was strengthened. Gradually, more of them came to the rescue, calling constantly.
“A murder of crows!” she said aloud to herself. She liked the way that sounded; there were twenty of them. Their black, pointy bodies fused with the wire as they hunched ominously over their target. They formed one throbbing voice, suddenly stopping and then gradually starting up again. She saw another crow flying by in the distance, and wondered if it would join the mob, but it carried on to its destination. Occasionally, one would jump up and down, flapping its wings. They then simultaneously turned around, and faced the opposite direction, relentless with their weapon of sound. At the end of the alley, she saw what looked like a cat or a raccoon run onto the sidewalk and disappear behind some hedges. She spotted the tail of the animal as it snuck into a fenced yard across from her building. The crows followed its path, moving sideways along the wire. They slowly dispersed as the threat crept away.
She lay back down after the show. Usually, she would swear at the crows, angered by the sleep disruption and their ugly sounds. She recalled a summer day when she had been a victim of one swooping down at her from the treetops towering above the city sidewalks. After yelling and waving her arms to scare it away, two more returned, frighteningly close to the tips of her ears. Another time, while walking beside a busy road, she felt a sharp tap on her head. Looking up, she saw black tail-feathers and dangling feet flying away from her face.
”That crow just hit me on the head!” she said to a man who was passing her.
“Good thing you have hair!” he said, pointing at his balding head. She smiled at the memories and drifted back to sleep.
A strange tugging at the end of her bed awoke her. It was her cat Yoda, meowing and poking at her big toe sticking out from under the blanket. “What! What do you want?” she said, sitting up and looking at the clock on her nightstand. It was 6:30 a.m. Yoda sat on his haunches; his eyes were black and shiny like big marbles. “Dumb cat!” she mumbled, and lay back down. Yoda pounced on her back and yowled. “God! First the crows, now the cat!” she exclaimed, sitting up angrily, sending the cat jumping onto the hardwood floor. “What, what, what?”
Yoda’s big, low ears flattened against his striped head as he ran out the bedroom door, his belly close to the ground. His tail flicked quickly from side to side while he led her through the living room and out the balcony door. The morning sun revealed a black- and red-feathered pile on the floor beside her potted bright pink azaleas. The crow’s wings were disheveled and crooked, its eyes open and still. A trail of blood seeped out of its beak. Yoda looked up at her for approval, licking his lips and purring.
“Yoda, did you kill this bird?” she asked. She couldn’t believe her timid apartment cat killed something that was almost his size. Bending over to get a good look at him, she noticed a red stain on the white fur around his mouth and throat. “How did you? On the balcony?” Knowing she wouldn’t get an answer from him, she collapsed on the patio chair, barely feeling the cold metal against her skin through the thin fabric of her pajamas. She stared at the corpse, shuddering at the thought of cleaning it up. It was probably still slightly warm. Yoda admired his prey, his head pointed down and ears pricked stiffly with fascination. He looked back at her, closed his eyes, licked his front paws delicately, and slowly walked back inside.
“Funny how something so cute can do something so horrible,” she muttered, resting her head between her hands. She thought of the crows squawking earlier that morning. There was no way that could have been Yoda down there unless he somehow grew wings. There wasn’t a tree close enough for him to climb down and back up. The bird must have already been injured, and then had the misfortune of landing on the balcony with an awaiting, thrilled cat.
She remembered when they lived in a house with a yard; he was pathetically unsuccessful with his timing while trying to pounce on a sparrow. He couldn’t even target a moth without her help. “I guess instinct has a way of taking over at the right time,” she thought as she stood up, stretching and yawning. She froze. She was face to face with two crows perched on the wire across from the balcony. Their beady eyes glimmered as they cocked their heads to one side. They lunged towards her unabashedly, their wings spread like giant hands. She ducked down, shielding her face with her arms, her back towards them. Their movements hissed in her ears as she ran inside.
As she slammed the balcony door shut, Yoda ran down the hall towards the bedroom. “Dumb cat! Now look what you’ve done!” she yelled. “Cause all this trouble and then run away like a coward!” Looking back out through the sliding glass door, she saw more crows lining up on the wire. She looked down on the balcony floor and noticed the body was smallish as the bits of grey fluff on its back jostled in the morning breeze. The thought of the parents protecting their precious baby wasn’t so moving anymore.
“Oh shit! Yoda, you killed a baby!” she screamed. She could see her neighbours across the alley peeking out through their curtains behind the unrelenting army. She was causing a scene! She didn’t know what to do. The birds kept swooping towards the balcony and landing on the rooftop directly above. Yoda was chattering away on the windowsill in the bedroom, edging them on. Slamming the window shut, she pushed him off the sill. “Stop it!” she yelled, and he cowered under the bed.
She stomped out of the room and retrieved a garbage bag and umbrella from the hall closet. Shoving the balcony door open, she released the umbrella and held it against her body as she wrapped the bag around the corpse. The crows were still swooping, but deterred by her shield. Twisting the bag shut, she left the apartment and exited out the back of the building into the alley. She placed the body bag on the ground, near the trees where she believed the nest was. Returning inside, she watched from her bedroom window as the crows swarmed over the black plastic mound. She understood the pain of losing a child.
Links: What To Do If You Find A Dead Bird:
http://www.wwhd.org/about_crows.htm
http://www.bchealthguide.org/healthfiles/hfile88.stm#hf88006
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