WHY GOOD CROWS GO BAD

This morning as I was making tea in the silence that verges a clear-sky sunrise - it was still rather dusky - out of the corner of my sensitive tea-making eye I noticed a large, dark shape shoot by outside just above the deck, where large, dark shapes rarely shoot by at any time of day.

I looked out the big window into the garden to see what it had been, and who was it but Dr. Crow. He was flying hard, had taken a brave and unprecedented shortcut right over the deck, which had always been a Dr. Crow no-no, since one of those featherless biped conundrums could pop right out of a doorway and grab him, teach him to say "Nevermore" or something.

Why did he break his rule and fly over the deck I wondered, why is he flying so hard when nothing's chasing him and there's nothing much going on? Then when he flashed by a second time I realized he was searching for a secure location, because gripped in his beak was an entire slice of bread, the equivalent of a week's salary for a crow, even a doctor.

Right away I wondered where he'd gotten a whole slice of bread up here on the mountain, but then I thought: he's a crow; of course he can get a whole slice of bread up on a mountain. He landed in the meadow across the road, then immediately flew back, straight across the deck, empty-beaked; he had hidden the bread in the grass!!

A moment later he was whizzing by again, straight as the crow flies, with another slice-- you could practically hear him panting, he was flying so hard in his hurry to get the heist all stashed, but this time he headed in a slightly different direction, off through the trees; he would hide this portion of his treasure in another place he knew about.

It was a haul; he had hit it bigtime, and was stashing it here and there in his version of the Cayman Islands. Soon he'll be seen in only the finest trees, smoking big cigars, a sultry crowette on each wing and no apparent source of income, used to work for Goldcrow-Sachs.