DIALOG WITH CORVINUS MAXIMUS

I was out making kindling in the late afternoon today when Corvinus Maximus, with the classic Roman beak, stopped by on his branch of the chestnut tree and began to harangue me at high volume, cawing on at length about how uncooperatively I've been handling the kitchen garbage these days when I dump it on the compost pile or something, he's non-stop with the complaints - I've been dumping woodstove ash at the same time and right on top of the kitchen garbage - how is he supposed to make a living, how can he find anything there amid all those leaves, let alone eat it, am I trying to poison him or interfere with his livelihood, meager as it is, not to mention scaring him and his friends the other day by the way, and even worse, putting nets over my garden with all those delectations there, did I know how hungry his mother is, and not only that and on he went, he has so many woes, his life is as dark as his outlook and no one treats him right, no job, reduced to scavenging etc.

He could go on forever and I'd never finish the kindling, so I just gave him a dose of his own medicine and started complaining loudly back, more eloquently and less selfishly I hope - though he didn't want to hear a word of it - about how he had upset that stuff on the deck just the other day, and broken into a trash bag out front, and eaten all my soybean sprouts that time, and crapped on my new car, I too went on at length, I have a lot of complaints against Corvinus Maximus and we have no other mutual court of justice so I just laid it out there on the air for all the world to hear, even though it was just he and I-- but like all crows, though Maximus can dish it out he can't take it. He flew off in the embodiment of huff, shoulders hunched, yelling complaints, his black toga trailing behind. But he'll be back.