For the past month, or more, I have been rudely and prematurely awakened at daybreak by the insolent cawing of crows.
And kept awake and alert by them until darkness finally ends their revel.
It is difficult to say who is the more contemptible; me for loathing their existence, or them for disdaining the value of my rest and the scornful disrespect they show for all those not of their kind.
Their cackle and cawing goes on all day, and the garrulous banter can drive a man mad.
They perch in the trees above me, assembling in enormous numbers, sinister in their jet-black feathers with an iridescent tinge.
Walking under these vultures, an ominous feeling comes over me that they have gathered in anticipation, that maybe they know something is going to happen that I don’t, and the moment I fall down and become vulnerable, they will converge, picking my bones clean. First my eyes, then my flesh and organs.
At first light of morning, they congregate on the lawn looking for bugs and worms.
I suppose they fill a useful role in pest control with their voracious appetites.
Once satisfied, they settle in the nearby trees (the mall equivalent for the bird world where they can see and be seen) to hold their open-air meetings to discuss the day’s events, and birdbrain banal gossip.
Happiness is stumbling onto a songbird nest, taking the eggs and killing the young.
The cacophony of harsh and discordant sounds coming from the beaks of the older parent birds and the newly hatched crows, learning to mimic their kind and other kinds of birds, is not a euphonious melody. Everybody talks at once and nobody listens. It reminds one of a political meeting, but this is the original “caw-cus” meeting, a crowing and crowning summit conference in the tall lofty poplars and spruce.
The crows appear to be teaching their young about becoming a proper scavenger, and about the wily ways of man.
If I go outside, with nothing in hand, they insouciantly crow-hop away a few steps, stand crouched on bent gnarly knees, and flit their wings for a take-off getaway, but remain in the area with one beady eye warily fixed upon me.
However, if I come out carrying a rifle, they take to flight immediately and hide in the branches of a tree, just beyond gunshot range, puffed-up with gloat and cackling at me with a sassy tongue.
Most likely telling their young, “see there son, that’s a gun and when you see the two-legged thing come out of the house with a gun, you cut and run, and we can crow about it in the trees.”
They may have gained that knowledge from their brash Magpie cousins who are especially clever and crafty in sensing when humans are friends or foe.
They have leaned to thrive and multiply by keenly honing their survival instincts.
They also taunt my cats and dog. Flitting down from the trees, the robber-baron crows steal a few morsels of dogfood or catfood, and then retire to a nearby tree to gawk and geek at my pets in a high-pitched malicious and impudent laugh. And once they have had their fun with my pets, they take a hankering for pecking holes in my plastic garbage bags, looking for some rotten delectable delight inside, meanwhile scattering tissue and papers everywhere. If I approach them they scatter in all directions with a cheeky beeky retort directed at me.
Few animals are safe from the marauding ways of crows.
I have seen them harass the slower moving but more powerful hawks. The crows, always on the lookout for easy pickings, search for a hawk carrying his latest gopher or vole kill between his talons. In gangs, not unlike the muggers at an ATM Bank machine, they commence to dive-bomb and make swooping pecks at the hawk, forcing him to drop his treasure and give it up to them.
Were they as industrious as they are nefarious, they would be too fat to fly.
No weather seems to deter them. They are out cavorting in the highest of winds, and the last bird to retire to safety when a thunderstorm approaches. Hot or cold days are equally to their liking. Sometimes hundreds of them gather in the trees, and sound as they are in-fighting, the din wafting over the fields and alerting the coyotes across the meadow to check out the commotion, thinking (hoping?) maybe the crows have stumbled onto a big kill that might be shared.
In the fall they will gather gregariously in even larger numbers before migrating south for the winter.
I will see the flocks grow ever larger, and a half-mile of fence line, each post dotted and topped by a crow, in a kind of upside down exclamation mark that reminds me they will soon be gone and my friends in Kansas and Oklahoma will then have their morning sleep interrupted.
Paul Hemingson is a freelance writer who lives near Spruce View. Contact him at paulhemi@telusplanet.net or www.paulhemingson.ca.