The Crow

by Barbara
(Lawrenceville, Ga)

While working in the yard one day I noticed a crow sitting on our fence post weakly calling. Since it was such a large bird I, at first, thought it was sick or injured. More crows came in the evening and called to it. Still it remained fixed only weakly calling back.

The next morning "my crow" had moved on down the fence line and other crows sat for quite a long time and called to it. It seemed for hours (since the calling was a little annoying) that they called back and forth to each other. Finally, I decided "my crow" was smaller and was possibly a young one. It could flutter to low branches but could not fly.

After a time the several other crows would fly away only to come back hours later. At one point I thought I saw them bring the "baby" something. This continued for a couple of days with the "baby" moving along the fence line sometimes inside and sometimes outside.

Finally, I heard a terrible clatter of crows cawing urgently. A fox had found the baby and had pounced on it. I was able to shoo the fox away and retrieve the poor crow which was gasping for air. I decided I would try to find a basket that I could put it in and hang it from a tree so it could safely recover. However, within a few minutes the crow was dead-either scared to death or fatally injured.

For another day or two the parents and friends remained calling for their baby. In researching crows I discovered that they are very intelligent birds who live in communities. They live with relatives and neighbors and look out for each other-even adopting orphaned crows or helping family members. If tragedy strikes the community the crows will move on to another area.

I had never been much of a fan of crows since they will kill song birds, but this incident led me to respect and be a little in awe of them. True to the information I read I have not seen any crows in my yard since.