My Friends, the Crows
Cecilia Manguerra Brainard
Years
ago, we didn't have crows in our neighborhood. We had song birds, smaller-sized
birds. I'm not sure when crows came around but suddenly they were on the
sidewalks, on top of trees and electric lines. They came around to eat the bird
food I left in our garden and they drank and bathed in the bird bath that I
kept clean and filled. At some point a bird flu epidemic killed many crows but
they came back.
One Spring morning I found a blue plastic ball right outside my
kitchen door. It was the size of a Ping-Pong ball, with faceted sides. I’d never
seen anything like it and I suspected it was left there for me, I saved it. I
did some research and learned about the girl in Seattle who fed the crows in
her garden and received gifts from them. When a crushed Styrofoam cup with a
dead cockroach in it appeared in the same spot the ball had been, I felt
certain a crow was giving me gifts. The appearance of another Styrofoam cup
with gooey stuff in it sealed my conviction that a crow or crows had been
leaving me these items.
