CROW SEES RED

Dr. Crow does his dawn song and dance in the chestnut tree outside my window every morning, always the old crow standard that goes "CAAAWWW! CAAAAWWWW!! CAAAAAWWWWW!!!" in decibel increments, urging the sun to hurry up while declaring his own eminently worthy presence to the morning at large and calling for all the other crows everywhere else to shut their big fat beaks so he can be heard.

This morning, though, in stark violation of this corvine ritual, he was saying something I've never heard him say before, it sounded like a subdued, terse, angry, very personal "kew, kew, kew," like he was really pissed at his teenager over a cell phone in a crowded waiting room, or just saying 'damn that tax office' as he kicked a branch, or something other crowfully disturbing, whatever that might be. He was so quiet that it was difficult to hear what he was saying with any certainty.

But crow teenagers are generally very raucously behaved and cause no trouble for their parents, unlike so many human teenagers, and crows in their sublime craftiness have never paid taxes and simply wouldn't tolerate the illogic of waiting rooms, so I can't accurately imagine what he was complaining about.

But whatever the reason for his black bitterness, it must have passed, for within an hour or so I heard him telling the other crows to shut up again.