DR. CROW

He wears black all the time, has big feet and a nose five times the size of his brain, but don't let that fool you. With eyes like shoe buttons he is one sharp cookie, knows his business, tends it like a miser, watches it like a hawk. Has a raucous laugh, talks to himself a lot, has few acquaintances and none he can really trust, because he knows they're just like him. He walks with a swagger and is very nervous around houses, which people unpredictably pop out of just as he's about to pull off a heist. A member of the avian underworld, godfather of these parts, he is known to me as Dr. Crow.

Sunday evening, as I was enjoying a beer out on the deck, the cattle egrets were settling in to their usual roost in the small grove of trees across the paddies, maybe a dozen of the elegant birds, so graceful in their flight, but so ungainly when settling into trees for the night, that it takes time for them to get everything just the way they want it, the elegant are often thus fussy, and there was a good deal of commotion and bustle and tipsy-testing and rearrangement and moving and changing and what not; finally they got settled in, when all of a sudden they burst from the trees in a cloud of white, and swirled around screaming in cattle egret "What in heaven?!" "Oh my goodness!!"and "Dear me!!"

Right at the acme of where they'd all been, suddenly appearing in all his blackness, was Dr. Crow, who had dive-bombed the egrets from the other side to scatter them, and now he stood there right on top of where they'd all just gotten flustered from, sticking his big beak out and going "HaaaH! HaaaH! HaaaH! HaaaH! " And they swirled around in the distant air saying "You nasty fellow!!", finally giving it up and winging off in search of a more refined neighborhood to roost.

Dr. Crow NEVER spends any time in those trees. He just didn't want to see any big elegant white birds settle in as though they owned the place, when in fact a smaller, floppy black bird owns it.
The land we have a human deed for, and upon which we built our house up here on the mountainside, is also owned by Dr. Crow, who oversees many of the primary aspects of the enterprise, watching over everything with a dark and careful eye to make sure that all is going corvinely. He accepts our late and ongoing presence for fees in kind, such as an entire row of bean shoots from our spring garden, or a really messy look in our garbage. He doesn't ask much. In fact he doesn't ask at all.

Crows don't really like each other, either; they may act like they do now and then, but you can see they don't in the blackness of their eyes, and in that floppy solo get-your-hand-off-my-shoulder kind of way they fly. Sure you might on occasion see crows in a cawcus of three or four or even more, but whenever possible they sit on separate telephone poles and talk long distance, which they prefer, that's why their voices are so loud, and why they're never very close to one another for long.