Tag Archives: murder of crows

Beautiful Day for a Murder

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It’s early morning and I pile Gracie and Joker into the van and race the sunrise to the park, two miles West of here.

I don’t see any wildlife as I pull into the park entrance with my high beams on. The road winds past the fenced-in baseball field on the right and the lake on the left. No dogs are allowed in this part of the park. I open my window and the dogs and I sniff the air. Me, for skunks. Them, I’m not sure. I’ve caught lovers – and sleeping cops – this time of day, too, but this morning both the air and the parking lot are lacking any predawn drama. The eastern sky burns away the night as I drive to the far end of the parking lot and pick a spot closest to the footbridge. It looks like a magnificent sunrise is about to be born. Easily, this is my favorite time of day.

I use my mega beam flashlight to spotlight what I know will be the dog’s first stop; the holes under the bushes by the footbridge. Various wildlife use these holes because of their proximity to the river, so there are always fresh scents for the dogs to explore. There is nothing lurking around bushes that I can see from here so I trust my nose and let the dogs out, then follow them at a much slower pace.

As they run, their tags jingle like cowbells that act as an early warning system. That’s not by accident, and I use the flashlight to scan the tree line for beady red eyes or critters running away.

Suddenly my ballcap, which I wear backwards, flies off my head and I feel a breeze through my hair, but that was no gust of wind! My heart races as the silhouette of a large bird drops my hat from its claws then flaps up to the sky. I watch it turn around as the clouds set on fire, and I get excited.

Gracie and Joker start growling and I turn the flashlight just in time to see my white dog, Joker, dart down the bank towards another hole. I can’t see Gracie. I turn back to the sky to see the clouds turning from burnt-orange to bleeding-red, but no crow. It is one of the richest sunrises this summer and wish I could enjoy it. But I spot my hat and then shine the light around for Gracie.

Three loud shrills cry out from overhead.

I turn to see Fred in his pickup truck pulling into the parking lot, but no sign of the crow. Fred is usually the first one here. He owns two dogs, too; Sadie and Taco. Both are female and get along great with my dogs. Sadie’s tan and as big as Gracie. Taco is a Chihuahua.

The crow swoops just over my head and flies straight at Fred’s truck!

I flash back to when Fatso cut off the squirrels’ retreat in my backyard and suddenly have more concerned for that stupid bird than my dogs. I run towards the parking lot waving my hands and yelling, ‘Stop!’ thinking the crow doesn’t know a truck from a squirrel! Behind me, I hear cowbells and Gracie growling something fierce, but I keep running, shouting and waving my arms.

The crow soars only a foot or two over the truck’s cab then flies up. The sky is already fading to blue.

Fred stops, lowers the window and casually says, ‘What’s up?’ He looks over my shoulder, adds, ‘Oh.’

I turn to see Joker and Gracie playing tug-of-war with a critter! ‘Gracie! Joker! Stop that!’ Gracie growls louder. I shout louder and with more growl in my own voice, then take off towards them. After a few more calls, they come to me.

Fred’s dogs listen when he lets them out and tells them to heel.

I scold my dogs as soon as we’re back in the parking lot, then look them over for bite marks or scratches, and say to Fred, ‘Did you see that crow flying at your truck?’

‘Saw somethin out of the corner of my eye. I was watchin you wavin your hands an figured Joker got skunked again. But it looks like a rabbit from here.’ He reaches into the bed of his pickup and pulls out a five-gallon bucket. But before we can take a step, a few common crows fly in and start to feast on both halves of the rabbit, now separated by about ten feet. More crows are overhead. Fred says, ‘Watch this.’

Before he can sic Sadie, I grab his arm and tell him, ‘Don’t do that! That’s what the crow was trying to tell you!’ My voice sounds strange to me and I have no idea where the statement comes from, but I say it with certitude. ‘That crow got Gracie and Joker to kill it for them!’ I nod towards the massing crows. Fred stares at me.

Fred’s an old farm boy from Minnesota; a man of few words. He just nods back and lights a cigarette.

Sunlight is just hitting the taller trees as I tell him how Gracie and Joker killed a squirrel for the same fat crow that just attacked his truck, and how I let the crow feed it to its flock. How it took almost an hour. ‘Look at the dogs! Gracie and Joker were just that calm the first time, too.’

All but Taco are down on their haunches and ready to spring into action if necessary, but they’re just sitting on the grassy edge by the pavement with their ears up, watching the birds. Taco is at Fred’s feet. There is an entire murder of crows now, too many to count, coming from every direction.

Crows are not a quiet bunch when they eat, or friendly. More and more land and all ferociously fight each other off for a piece of rabbit. There seem to be more losers than winners with some crows stealing from others in midflight.

As morning breaks, a few more dog owners drive in and I tell each to leash their dogs and just watch.

When there is nothing left, the crows fly off as fast as they flew in.

As we walk up to the battlefield, I say to Fred, ‘You only got here, what? Fifteen, twenty minutes ago?’

‘Crows don’t waste time,’ Fred says as the dogs sniff and piss. We kick the rabbit’s head and a couple of attached bone-and-pelt bits into the river, they can be dinner for some other scavenger. Mother Nature will have to take care of blooded grounds, and there isn’t much else to clean up. We set off on our morning walk through the woods with four other folks and a half dozen other dogs.

Fred and I were the only ones who saw how the rabbit died and he agrees to play dumb. It’s not something I’m proud of. Not something you boast about, especially to other dog owners. After a few minutes, the ferocity of the crows and their dazzling aerobatics are old news, and conversations drift to other things.

Fred and I fall behind the others. While our dogs play and scout as dogs do, I tell him, ‘This is the third time that crow has paid me a visit.’ I tell him about the second time, when the crow dropped the charm on my deck. I make my wife the scapegoat and tell him the fact it arrived on the twenty-seventh anniversary of the date on the back freaked her out. ‘It had the name Jeremy on the other side.’ I don’t tell him what that meant to her, or how she deduced the date to be 05/??/1990.

‘Crow’s tellin ya his name,’ Fred says. ‘Greeks worshiped crows. Egyptians made em gods in the afterlife.’

I start to feel all sweaty under my long-sleeve tee and jeans even though it not even sixty degrees yet. I still haven’t told my wife, but after this morning, I’ve got to tell someone before I go crazy.

‘He talked to me, Fred. I heard someone say leave it and when I looked out my window there was only that big, fat crow. Just staring at me. I swear, he spoke to me. He told me three hours before the dogs killed the squirrel; he said leave it – twice! He knew what was coming!’

After a long pause, Fred says, ‘Crows can talk.’

‘I’ve read that. They can mimic certain words, but I didn’t say that first.’

We walk on in silence. Fred starts to chuckle, then says, ‘Tell ya somethin even funnier.’

I wonder if he thinks I’m making it all up.

He lights another cigarette, says, ‘When I waza kid, growin up on my uncle’s dairy farm in Minnesota, I once saw a lone wolf chase down and kill a sick ol moose. About an hour later, a pack of coyotes chased off the wolf. A while after that, dozens of buzzards chased off the coyotes an got that moose all to emselves. Until hundreds of crows attacked the buzzards, in waves, an chased em off. Crows are social in that kinda way, but once they got the moose all to emselves, it was each crow for emself. Just like we seen here.’ He chuckles, ‘I never heard of one crow feedin another. Maybe in a nest…’

We walk on without conversation. I’ve never known Fred to bullshit, but I feel like he’s playing One-Upmanshit with me. I don’t defend my position any stronger than, ‘Tomorrow, I’ll bring the charm.’

When we get back to the parking lot, Fred says, ‘Growin up, there use to be this ol boy, Indian guide, who talked crows into huntin for em an to bein lookouts for em. Remember seein em, maybe thirty years ago, walkin along a dirt road an sure enough, there’s crows flyin over em.’

‘I’ll look him up on the Internet,’ I say, sure I’m getting more upmanshit. ‘What’s his name?’

Fred shake his head, says, ‘Owe Cousin Tom a call, I’ll ask em.’ With that, he drives off.

Maybe he does believe me, I don’t care either way. I know what I saw, what I heard.

I use a tattered bath towel to dry off Gracie and Joker before I let them get in the van. As I do, I hear three quick caws. I turn expecting to see Fatso, but it’s only a small common crow up by the pagoda. He’s not even looking in this direction.

Driving back home, I realize Fatso knows our morning routine, too. I wonder how long he’s been watching me, watching my dogs. I mumble, ‘Smart bastard needs a better name than Fatso.’

Joker comes forward in the van and I say to her, ‘What about Alfred? Or Hitchcock? He’s every bit as smart as those birds.’ But further thought of those birds is chilling. Then I remember Fred’s comment; He’s tellin ya his name.

Jeremy

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Part Two

It has been a few weeks since that fat crow swooped in and cut off the squirrels’ retreat from my dogs. After Gracie killed one of the squirrels, ‘Fatso’ crow proceeded to dismember it and dish it out to a murder of other crows. That’s right, a murder. Since that day, I’ve found out a lot about crows and that’s what a bunch of them are called; a murder. How fitting. I can’t think of anything more premeditated than what I witnessed last month.

I also learned that crows, in fact, do have a language. Three caws are thought to mean either all clear when they are short and crisp, or varying degrees of danger depending on the pitch, volume and the duration. Crows are thought to be monogamous, and generations live together in colonies in groves, like the patch behind my neighbor’s house.

All this I learned and mostly forgot since that episode, but for some reason it comes back to me today. I’m working on my computer but my mind keeps drifting. The windows are open and the morning sun warms my face when suddenly the sky goes dark for an instant and I catch a huge shadow cross my lawn. I look up but too late to see the bird who created it.

A minute later it happens again. I get up and go to the window just in time to see a fat, black bird land on the peak of my neighbor’s roof. It’s Fatso, he’s back, and my heart starts to race. I say to myself, I was just thinking of you.

It sits there and stares at me staring at it, bobbing its head all the while. It’s holding something in its beak.

I never did explore that area behind my neighbor’s house like I promised myself. For one thing, its private property and for another its largely swamp and underbrush. I look off in that direction now to see if there are more crows mulling about. I wonder if Fatso is planning another attack. I don’t see any other crows, but this one, remarkably, swoops down and lands on the birdfeeder fifteen feet from my window.

I can’t quite make out what’s in its beak. It keeps bobbing its head up and down as it looks at me first with one big brown eye and then the other. Its eyes look almost human.

It drops what its holding and the object pings against the planks. The bird flies off.

Staring at the object, I try to make out what it is and don’t notice the crow circle my house. Fatso breaks the sunlight again, and as it does the object seems to wink at me. The crow’s shadow is twenty-feet wide as it glides across the lawn. I hear three short, quick caws as it flies behind my neighbor’s house. Happy calls, if I remember right from my studies.

I rub my palms against my pants. From the window, I can only tell the object was once round and shiny.

Crows have been known to bring gifts to humans that feed them or leave out food for them. I wonder if that’s what this is. I’m thinking that Fatso, who a month ago got me to leave the dead squirrel so it could feed it to its colony, is now rewarding my good behavior. Good human, here’s your treat!

I go out to retrieve it.

It’s a charm. A bracelet’s charm with a broken loop attached to the cleft of a heart.

Dirty, bent and battered, it is hard to tell much else as I pick it up. There is writing on it, on both sides, but I can’t tell what it says. It stinks like a swamp and I take it to the sink to wash it off.

It must have been wherever the crow found it for a long time, judging by all the grime I work out with a nylon scrub brush. One side is engraved bolder than the other and I make out the name Jeremy. The other side is a date, but only the top portions of the middle numeric date are still there. Under stronger light and using a bit of numeral deduction I work it out to be either 5/23/1990 or 5/28/1990.

I take it to the kitchen table and sit. Jeremy? The name taps something in the back of my mind, but it is the date that has me excited; it could be exactly twenty-seven years ago… ‘Today! This is more than a coincidence,’ I say out loud.

I remember that feeling I had this morning; thinking about Fatso crow and then there he is. ‘This bird is playing with my mind.’ I go back outside to see if it is on my neighbor’s roof. I don’t see or hear it. Or any other crows.

Crows have the intelligence of a small primate but this goes way beyond that. I say, ‘How could a bird know a calendar? It has to be pure coincidence… and stop talking to yourself!’ Then add under my breath, ‘bird’s making me crazy.’ My heart for some odd reason is racing.

Jeremy? The name does mean something, but I can’t place what.

I put the charm on top of my wife’s mail. That way I’ll be sure to remember to tell her about what happened today, and four weeks ago. I still haven’t told her about the first episode. I don’t want to admit to her that I tried to talk to a crow, and anyway, she would not have been impressed with Gracie’s and Joker’s behavior that day… Once, after Gracie brought the head of a rabbit into the kitchen, she went after the dog with a broom! My wife is a nurse. She has no appreciation for battle trophies, or delusional husbands.

‘What’s this?’ she asks as soon as she gets home, picking up the charm. She reads the name. ‘Jeremy?’

‘That came special delivery,’ I say. ‘Read the date.’

‘Special delivery?’ She turns it over. ‘What’s the date? I can’t read it. Who sent it?’

‘It’s today’s date. May 23rd, only 1990. Or maybe it’s the 28th; it’s hard to tell. A crow dropped it off.’

She looks at me.

‘Seriously,’ I say. ‘A crow literally dropped it off.’ She rolls her eyes.

I tell her about the shadow, the crow staring at me from the birdfeeder, and how it dropped the charm on the deck. But I decide not to tell her about last month’s episode as her expression changes from her cute dear to curious to something else entirely.

She clutches her fist around the charm until her knuckles turn white and she says, ‘Jeremy,’ with a look in her eyes that I’ve only seen two or three times. The last time was the day her sister passed after a long illness. It is the look of closure, the look of final resolve; there is nothing more she, or any nurse, can do.

She starts to break down and cry and I go to her and hug her but not understanding. I can only think she must have a patient with that name. She calms down in my arms, then says after a moment, ‘You don’t remember?’ She backs away and looks at me with steel-grey eyes torn red at the seams. ‘Jeremy? Julia?’

Suddenly, I do remember!

The second name triggers it; Jeremy was going to be the name of our first-born, or Julia, if it was a girl. We made that decision on our Honeymoon in the summer of ’89, right after my wife told me she was pregnant.

She turns over the charm and says, ‘those middle two aren’t numbers, they’re question marks.’

I flash back to a store we stopped at outside of Las Vegas, where we bought a pair of fluffy baby booties. Seamed together, one shoe was pink and the other was blue with ‘Las Vegas’ stitched in red across the toes. It was specifically designed for expecting couples like us. We had the names ‘Jeremy’ and ‘Julia’ stitched on the sides, and we hung them from the car’s rearview mirror for the rest of our Honeymoon.

But our first-born was not born. My wife had a miscarriage a day or two after we got home.

Coming at the end of a fantastic three-month, 5,000-mile long honeymoon, and eager to start a family, it felt like someone turned off the perfect picture show in mid-frame.

We vowed to try again, and not to use either name after that.

We couldn’t know the sex of the child that soon, but we did work out an approximate due date. My wife had them stitch the heels of the booties with 05/??/1990.

 

 

Leave It

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What a beautiful spring morning. The sun shines brightly through my home-office windows as it burns off the morning dew from the deck, the lawn and the trees. A dozen or more birds are taking turns at the birdfeeder just off the deck. The weather report says Detroit might hit seventy-degrees for the first time this year, so I open the office windows and let in some long overdue fresh air.

The smell of spring invites me outdoors, but I must get this work done. I turn my attention back to the computer with a new resolve; finish, then get outside and enjoy this day. Both dogs, Gracie and Joker, are resting upstairs, as is their custom after we get back from the park in the morning. The television and radio are silent and the only sound is the morning rush hour chirping at the birdfeeder, until even that seems to go quiet.

Fully engrossed in my work, I lose all track of time.

‘Leave it.’

Startled, I look up. What?

I look out the window, convinced I just heard an unfamiliar, high-pitched voice, say leave it. It is dead quiet. There is no one in my yard or either of the neighbors’ yards, that I can see, but the birdfeeder has been commandeered by one of largest crows I’ve ever seen. Easily twice the size of a normal crow, its shimmering, azure-blue on midnight-black wings envelop its unusually rotund body. It stands on the peak of the little roof that covers the birdfeeder and just stares at me, first with one big, brown eye and then the other. It does not eat the feed, just bobs its head up and down as it switches its focus from one eye to the other. I’ve never seen such a fat crow. I turn to get my cellphone to take a picture.

‘Leave it.’

I get a chill in my spine, and slowly turn back to the window. The voice sounds like it is coming from my deck. I stand, put my nose on the screen and look along the house half expecting to see someone. There is no one there. I look down under the windowsill, then question if it wasn’t all in my head.

The crow is staring at me. It hasn’t moved in over a minute.

I’m home alone. No one is going to hear me talking to a crow, so I say half-jokingly, ‘Leave what?’

The crow spreads its wings and bobs its head, then caws three times. And then flies off.

I watch it circle over my neighbor’s house before it lands on the peak of that roof. It caws again, three more shrills. Though more distant, these caws sound even louder. It sits there and stares at my window. Feeling a little creeped out, I go back to what I was working on and try to forget that I just asked a crow a question. And that it seemed to almost respond. I wonder what three shrills means in crow-talk?

I finish my work in time to make lunch for me and the dogs, who by now are awake and hungry. They anxiously watch me prepare their bowls with a mixture of last night’s leftovers with dry and canned dog food. Gracie stands by the deck door and starts one of her deep-throated growls, and I know there’s a squirrel in the yard. But I also know food-in-a-bowl takes precedence.

Squirrels are endless entertainment for my dogs, both here at home and at the park. At ages eight and nine, both dogs are now too old and too slow to catch the squirrels over a short distance. My mutts never were smart enough to hunt in a coordinated attack. The critters always hightail it as fast as they can for the trees then climb to an unreachable branch and wait out the dogs. Sometimes, they chastise the dogs with their squeaky, little chatter, and rattle their tails like sabers.

I take my lunch to the deck table, but the dogs’ bowls remain inside. I leave the screen door open so they can join me when they finish. There are squirrels in the yard, as usual, but they don’t pay me any mind, so long as the dogs don’t come out. They go back to foraging for their lunch and I go about forking mine.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see that fat crow perched on top of my neighbor’s roof. It looks again to be staring right at me. I point my fork at it and say in an admonishing tone, ‘Have you been up there all this time?’  My dogs think I’m calling them and come running.

As soon as the dogs’ paws hit the porch, the two squirrels under the birdfeeder bolt. They take their usual escape route and beeline-it for the nearest tree, about forty feet away. Suddenly, the crow swoops off the roof and heads straight for the base of that same tree. It arrives before the squirrels with its wings spread as big as an umbrella. Shocked, the squirrels turn back, right into Joker’s and Gracie’s charge. The crow flies off, but the squirrels are left with only one alternative and that is to try and jump, springboard-style, over the dogs. The squirrels jump, Gracie jumps, too, and head-butts one of them out of midair. Before that squirrel can find its feet, Gracie has her teeth around its neck and starts shaking her head from side to side.

‘Gracie, no!’ I yelled from the deck. ‘Stop it!’

Gracie tosses it, and the now-limp critter thuds back to earth twenty feet away. Joker chases it down and bites into its belly, and gets blood all over her white snout.

My appetite is spoiled.

I get the dogs back in the house and scold them, not for killing a squirrel; they don’t understand my words, just my infliction — they thought they were killing it for me. I’m mad because now I must clean off Joker! And now I gotta pick up a dead critter! Yesterday was trash day, so that means I’ll have to bag it and drive out to the park to trash it. Otherwise, it’ll be growing maggots before my next trash day.

I aggressively wash off Joker with Dove soap and get myself sloppy wet in the process. Even more pissed off now, I fill a brown shopping bag half way with crumbled newspaper to absorb the dead critter’s blood, then get a plastic garbage bag to put it all in. I grab my garden gloves, a shovel and a bucket and step around the garage to the back yard.

I stop cold.

That big, fat crow is tearing apart the squirrel and has half of its innards already on the ground.

It looks up at me, first with one eye, then the other, back and forth. I don’t move. It goes back to ripping out entrails. It isn’t taking time to eat, just tearing it apart with its beak and claws.

Another crow flies in, but instead of attacking Fatso, it lands a few feet away and walks up, picks up one of the pieces that’s already been removed and flies off. Soon, another crow lands, takes a piece of squirrel and flies off. I back-step into the garage. When I get back in my office, Gracie and Joker are watching out the window as the crows descend in their yard. My dogs don’t growl or bark or even perk their ears. They just watch, and so do I. Sortie after sortie, this repeats for nearly an hour.

All the other crows look just like crows, not bulbous like this first one. They all seem to come and go in the same direction and I wonder if there is a colony of them, or a flock, or whatever a bunch of crows are called, living in the patch of woods behind my neighbor’s house. I want to go exploring. I suddenly want to know everything I can find out about crows. Fatso flies off last with the remains of the squirrel clutched in its talons. It caws three times.

I never did take a picture. Caught up in watching that brilliant bird, it was easy to forget. What I cannot forget is how it cut off the squirrels’ only escape, how it got my dogs to kill its dinner, how Fatso played chef for an entire family of crows, and how it got me to leave it.

End, Part One.