just want to crow! It's not that I have a Peter Pan complex or anything like that, you understand. My reason is based in fact, rather than in fiction: I spent part of a sunny day in the unusual company of a fledgling crow and I feel compelled to crow about it all!
One early morning, I turned down a residential street on the way home from taking my daughter to work. Preoccupied by upcoming demands of the day, I saw what, at first, I took to be two cats in the middle of the road at the start of a fight. As I drew nearer, I found to my horror a single cat advancing on a juvenile crow. Adult crows cawed loudly overhead as they buzzed the cat with little effect. The fledgling was not yet half the size of an adult, with rounded head and no tail feathers to speak of, and could not fly away.
I pulled over and moved quickly towards the bird on foot. The cat didn't budge but looked at me with disinterested hostility. The bird started to hop away from me and the cat followed in pursuit. Going on auto pilot. I remembered that baby birds should remain with their 'parents' if possible. Taking my courage in hand, I picked up the crow.
The parent birds flew by, calling wildly as I placed the flapping creature as high as I could in a cedar hedge. The cat, on the other hand, watched all this in a detached way and stayed close by my feet. Its boldness made me furious and caused me to make extremely rude comments and frightening noises. This had the desired impact and the cat left.
Feeling limp, I climbed back into the car but noticed a drop of blood on my hand - and I knew it wasn't mine. I felt a shiver of panic. Reaching home, I called the Wild Bird Care Center. A volunteer answered and told me that birds injured by cats required antibiotics or die from infection. She advised me to bring the bird in. Bring the bird in? When? How? In what?
I dressed as fast as I could, picked up ski gloves, lined a cardboard box with a towel and took a cloth to cover the box. I drove back to where I had deposited the bird. At first, the scene seemed peaceful, the adult birds still cawing but more restrained.
That changed the second I left the car to approach the hedge. After some searching and in spite of the raucous commentary from the tree tops, I located my feathered friend lookingsmall and lost. It hadn't moved.
I put on the gloves and, heart pounding, reached into the bush. With some difficulty, I pried the bird loose from its perch. The adult birds went ballistic and I almost lost my resolve. I was not really sure that what I was doing was right, even though I understood the consequences of leaving the bird in the 'wild'.
Overcoming my qualms, I apologized loudly to the adults for taking away their fledgling and carefully put my 'prize' into the box. Then I caught my breath and prepared for the twenty minute trek to the Center. Fearing that my new charge might escape while I was on the Queensway, I cajoled a friend into coming along to ride 'shotgun'. Her job was to keep an eye on the birdie! We headed out. There was no sound from inside the box. I hoped that I hadn't killed the bird with my kindness.
Five minutes from the Center, my friend exclaimed that the bird had hopped out of the deep box! I pulled the car over in time to see the black explorer pacing along the rear window shelf of the car. It seemed happy enough there, so we continued on slowly, no doubt freaking out drivers who passed us and saw the crow on patrol.
It was with real relief that I allowed a Center volunteer to reach into the car and remove the bird gently in a towel. I followed her into the house and filled in an information form, not unlike what you do when you arrive at a hospital. I also left a little cash to cover the cost of the bird's treatment, as my contribution to the excellent work of the Wild Bird Care Center.
Right behind me was a huge man with a shabby starling on a 'bed' of flannel. Immediately behind him, a mother and three year old child who had 'rescued' a pigeon waited. We overheard talk of an albino robin someone else had found. It was an unusual and eclectic a procession that morning.
With reluctance but heartened by the promise of a health bulletin the next day, I left 'crowbaby' in good hands. My friend and I returned to the city core, somewhat overwhelmed by our close encounter of the avian kind. Everything else following seemed anticlimactic. I mean, it's not every day you have the chance to look a crow in the eye and learn, with amazement, that its eyes are absolutely sky blue.